KO Dividend Calculator
Dividend growth rate (CAGR)
| Year | Yield | Div / share | Annual income | Yield on cost | Cumulative income | Portfolio value | Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2.4% | $2.08 | $259.00 | 2.1% | $259.00 | $13,568 | 156.07 |
| 2 | 2.3% | $2.19 | $341.36 | 2.3% | $600.36 | $17,509 | 186.38 |
| 3 | 2.3% | $2.30 | $427.92 | 2.5% | $1,028 | $21,858 | 215.32 |
| 4 | 2.2% | $2.41 | $518.93 | 2.6% | $1,547 | $26,652 | 242.96 |
| 5 | 2.1% | $2.53 | $614.64 | 2.8% | $2,162 | $31,931 | 269.38 |
| 6 | 2.1% | $2.66 | $715.35 | 2.9% | $2,877 | $37,741 | 294.64 |
| 7 | 2.0% | $2.79 | $821.32 | 3.1% | $3,699 | $44,129 | 318.82 |
| 8 | 2.0% | $2.93 | $932.88 | 3.2% | $4,631 | $51,148 | 341.96 |
| 9 | 1.9% | $3.07 | $1,050 | 3.3% | $5,682 | $58,854 | 364.14 |
| 10 | 1.8% | $3.22 | $1,174 | 3.5% | $6,856 | $67,310 | 385.39 |
Year 1-10 dividend income (preview)
Based on a $10,000 initial investment with $200.00 monthly contributions, DRIP on.
Historical dividends per share
Recent dividends
| Ex-date | Cash amount | TTM yield | Fwd yield | Share price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-15 | $0.53 | 2.6% | 2.6% | $80.45 |
| 2026-03-13 | $0.53 | 3.3% | 2.7% | $77.34 |
| 2025-12-01 | $0.51 | 2.8% | 2.8% | $71.95 |
| 2025-09-15 | $0.51 | 3.0% | 3.1% | $66.21 |
| 2025-06-13 | $0.51 | 3.5% | 2.9% | $71.02 |
| 2025-03-14 | $0.51 | 2.8% | 2.9% | $69.16 |
| 2024-11-29 | $0.49 | 3.0% | 3.0% | $64.08 |
| 2024-09-13 | $0.49 | 2.7% | 2.7% | $71.41 |
| 2024-06-14 | $0.49 | 3.0% | 3.1% | $62.55 |
| 2024-03-14 | $0.49 | 3.8% | 3.2% | $60.50 |
| 2023-11-30 | $0.46 | 3.1% | 3.1% | $58.44 |
| 2023-09-14 | $0.46 | 3.9% | 3.1% | $58.46 |
Source: Polygon.io. Last 12 dividend distributions, most recent first. TTM yield = sum of last 12 months of payments ÷ share price on ex-date. Forward yield = this payment × detected payout frequency ÷ share price on ex-date.
About KO
The Coca-Cola Company — ticker KO — is one of the longest-running dividend payers in the US equity market. The company has paid a regular quarterly dividend without interruption for decades and has raised that dividend every year for more than sixty consecutive years, placing it among the small group of "Dividend Kings" with streaks of fifty years or longer. The streak began in the early 1960s and has continued through every recession, market crash, and global disruption since then. That continuity is one of the central reasons KO occupies a permanent place in many income-focused portfolios.
KO operates in the Consumer Defensive sector, specifically non-alcoholic beverages. Its business is built on a global system of branded concentrate sales: the company manufactures and sells syrups and concentrates to a network of bottling partners, who in turn produce, package, and distribute the finished products in roughly two hundred countries. This concentrate-centric structure produces high operating margins because the capital-intensive bottling and distribution work sits with the bottlers, while KO collects a recurring royalty-like stream from the brand portfolio. The portfolio includes Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Sprite, Fanta, Dasani, Powerade, Smartwater, Costa Coffee, and dozens of regional brands; total annual unit-case volume runs in the tens of billions.
The dividend mandate has been built into the company's capital-allocation policy for so long that it functions as a structural commitment rather than a discretionary use of cash. Management has consistently prioritized maintaining and growing the dividend alongside reinvestment in the brand portfolio, leaving share repurchases as the third lever rather than the first. Credit-rating agencies have maintained KO at investment-grade ratings throughout the streak; the company's balance sheet carries meaningful debt but is well supported by the recurring concentrate cash flow. Expense ratio is not applicable to individual stocks — the figure you'll see in the calculator above is zero, since there is no fund wrapper between you and the underlying shares.
The dividend has never been cut in modern history. It has occasionally grown more slowly than long-term inflation in particular years, but it has never been reduced or suspended, which is the relevant test for a dividend-streak investor.
How KO pays dividends
KO pays cash dividends quarterly, on a March–June–September–December cadence. Each quarter the board declares the per-share amount; the ex-dividend date typically falls in the second or third week of the second month of the quarter, and the pay date falls roughly two weeks after the ex-date. Holders who own shares as of the close on the day before the ex-date receive the dividend; holders who buy on or after the ex-date wait for the next quarterly payment. On the ex-date the share price drops by approximately the distribution amount on the open, reflecting the fact that the company has paid the cash out of its balance sheet.
Holders who DRIP through their broker receive additional shares purchased at the prevailing market price around the pay date. Most major brokers offer fractional-share DRIP for KO, so the full cash distribution is reinvested even when the per-share amount divided by the share price doesn't produce a whole number. The mechanics are identical to any other quarterly US dividend stock — there is no managed-distribution policy, no covered-call overlay, and no return of capital. The cash that funds the dividend comes from operating earnings; KO collects revenue from bottler concentrate sales, pays operating costs and taxes, services its debt, and the residual is available for capital return.
Recent growth pattern: KO has typically raised the quarterly per-share amount once per year, with the new rate taking effect on the first dividend payment following the announcement (usually announced in February for an April pay date). The size of the annual hike has historically run in the mid-single-digit range — high enough to outpace long-run inflation by a meaningful margin, but lower than the dividend growth rates produced by faster-growing companies in less mature industries. A meaningful share of total return therefore comes from the income line rather than from price appreciation, which is the defining shape of a mature Dividend King's return profile.
Because the increase happens once per year rather than spread over four quarters, the year-over-year dividend growth rate compounds cleanly. The calculator on this page uses the trailing five-year dividend growth rate to project the income line forward; you can override this with a custom growth rate if you want to model a more conservative or more optimistic path.
Who KO suits
KO suits investors who prioritize income stability and the predictability of a multi-decade streak over higher headline yield or faster price appreciation. The yield typically sits in the low-to-mid single digits — comfortably above the broader S&P 500 average, but far below the headline figures offered by high-yield names or covered-call funds. The trade-off is straightforward: KO trades a higher yield for a much higher confidence that the income will continue and grow.
In taxable accounts, KO's dividends are qualified for the long-term capital-gains rate, given the standard sixty-day holding-period rule (the share must be held for more than sixty days during the 121-day window centered on the ex-date). Most buy-and-hold investors clear this threshold easily. In tax-advantaged accounts — IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s — the qualified-dividend treatment is moot because no current-year tax applies; the structural advantage of a long-running dividend grower is the compounding of share count via DRIP without tax friction.
Compared to dividend-focused ETFs such as SCHD, KO offers concentrated exposure to a single mature business rather than a diversified basket. A KO investor accepts company-specific risk — including risks to the beverage category from sugar consumption trends, regulatory pressure on sweetened beverages, and currency translation effects since a meaningful share of revenue is generated outside the US dollar zone. SCHD, by contrast, holds roughly one hundred names with a single-stock cap; it sacrifices some yield to eliminate the concentration risk. Many investors hold both: KO for the long-streak signal, SCHD for the diversification.
KO is generally considered a defensive holding because beverage demand tends to be relatively insensitive to the economic cycle — people drink Coca-Cola in recessions as well as expansions. This defensive character makes it a common building block in income-oriented portfolios designed to be held through cycles. As with any single-stock position, this content is educational only; it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold KO, and individual circumstances vary.
Hypothetical scenarios
Scenario 1: $10,000 invested at KO at the start of 1995
Consider a hypothetical purchase of $10,000 of Coca-Cola stock at the start of 1995. At that point the dividend streak was already more than three decades long, and the company was a mature, globally distributed business — the kind of holding an income-oriented investor in the mid-1990s might have selected for its stability and reinvestment potential. The 1995 entry price implied a per-share figure in the low-to-mid double digits after adjusting for the 2012 two-for-one stock split, and the initial $10,000 would have purchased several hundred shares on that adjusted basis.
Holding from 1995 through to the present, with quarterly dividends reinvested via DRIP, three forces compound together. First, the per-share dividend grew each year as the company continued the streak — over the multi-decade window, the per-share figure increased many times over. Second, the share count grew as DRIP reinvested every quarterly distribution at the prevailing market price; share count growth alone, independent of price, would have meaningfully increased the income line by the end of the period. Third, the share price itself climbed roughly in line with the broader equity market over the long run, with substantial drawdowns along the way.
The illustrative outcome is not a precise dollar figure — actual returns depend on the exact reinvestment prices, dividend taxes paid along the way, and the specific entry and exit timing. The structural point is that all three forces — dividend growth, share count growth, and price growth — compounded against the same initial position for a multi-decade window, and the annual dividend income at the end of the period is an order of magnitude larger than the year-one income. This is the canonical Dividend King outcome; KO is offered as a structural illustration, not a forecast.
Scenario 2: $50,000 today plus $500/month for 20 years
Consider a hypothetical accumulation strategy: $50,000 starting capital, plus $500 per month added on a regular cadence for 20 years, all in KO. The calculator on this page can model this exactly — set Initial investment to $50,000, Extra contribution to $500, Contribution frequency to Monthly, time horizon to 20 years, and leave DRIP on.
The mechanics: each month, the new $500 buys additional shares at the current price, which adds to the share count and therefore to next quarter's dividend. Each quarter, the dividend received from all accumulated shares is reinvested, adding more shares at the prevailing price. Over 20 years this dual-track accumulation — DCA contributions plus dividend reinvestment — produces a position large enough that the annual dividend stream alone meets a meaningful portion of a typical income target, even before considering any potential price appreciation on the position.
What's worth focusing on in the calculator is not the year-20 portfolio total but the annual dividend column in the projection table. The first few years are slow because the base of dividend-generating shares is small; by year ten the annual dividend has grown significantly above year one as both the per-share amount and the share count have climbed; by year twenty the income line has compounded substantially. That ramp is the structural argument for combining DCA with a long-streak dividend grower like KO: the contribution side builds the share base while the dividend-growth side scales the income each of those shares produces.
These scenarios assume the historical pattern of dividend growth continues at a similar rate. Real outcomes depend on KO's future capital allocation, tax treatment in your specific account, and the broader path of US equity markets. Educational only; not a forecast.
Sources & methodology
Dividend history and price data come from Polygon.io's reference and aggregates endpoints. Forward yield is computed as the sum of the most recent four cash distributions divided by the previous-close share price. The dividend growth rate shown on this page is the compound annual growth rate of total annual distributions across the available history in this snapshot.
Last updated: 2026-05-15.
Information here is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past dividend history does not guarantee future payments. Verify all figures with the issuer or a registered financial advisor before making investment decisions.