O Dividend Calculator
Dividend growth rate not yet measurable from available history.
| Year | Yield | Div / share | Annual income | Yield on cost | Cumulative income | Portfolio value | Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5.3% | $3.24 | $523.00 | 4.2% | $523.00 | $12,799 | 208.83 |
| 2 | 5.7% | $3.47 | $724.07 | 4.9% | $1,247 | $15,768 | 260.07 |
| 3 | 6.2% | $3.71 | $964.89 | 5.6% | $2,212 | $18,944 | 315.88 |
| 4 | 6.7% | $3.97 | $1,254 | 6.4% | $3,466 | $22,374 | 377.13 |
| 5 | 7.2% | $4.25 | $1,602 | 7.3% | $5,068 | $26,112 | 444.95 |
| 6 | 7.8% | $4.54 | $2,022 | 8.3% | $7,090 | $30,229 | 520.72 |
| 7 | 8.5% | $4.86 | $2,532 | 9.4% | $9,622 | $34,808 | 606.14 |
| 8 | 9.2% | $5.20 | $3,154 | 10.8% | $12,777 | $39,956 | 703.39 |
| 9 | 9.9% | $5.57 | $3,916 | 12.4% | $16,693 | $45,806 | 815.19 |
| 10 | 10.7% | $5.96 | $4,857 | 14.3% | $21,549 | $52,529 | 945.03 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-30 | $0.27 | 5.5% | 5.1% | $64.24 |
| 2026-03-31 | $0.27 | 5.7% | 5.3% | $61.18 |
| 2026-02-27 | $0.27 | 5.2% | 4.8% | $67.00 |
| 2026-01-30 | $0.27 | 5.7% | 5.3% | $61.16 |
| 2025-12-31 | $0.27 | 6.2% | 5.7% | $56.37 |
| 2025-11-28 | $0.27 | 6.0% | 5.6% | $57.61 |
| 2025-10-31 | $0.27 | 6.0% | 5.6% | $57.98 |
| 2025-10-01 | $0.27 | 5.3% | 5.3% | $60.46 |
| 2025-09-02 | $0.27 | 6.0% | 5.6% | $57.74 |
| 2025-08-01 | $0.27 | 5.6% | 5.7% | $56.57 |
| 2025-07-01 | $0.27 | 5.5% | 5.6% | $57.80 |
| 2025-06-02 | $0.27 | 6.1% | 5.7% | $56.58 |
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 O
Realty Income Corporation — ticker O — is a US-listed real estate investment trust that brands itself "The Monthly Dividend Company." The company has paid monthly cash dividends for more than five decades and has increased the per-share monthly dividend amount more than one hundred times across its public history, with multiple increases in most years. The streak of consecutive monthly payments and the cadence of frequent small raises are the central elements of O's identity as an income vehicle — investors hold Realty Income specifically because the income stream arrives monthly and grows on a near-quarterly basis.
O operates in the net-lease commercial real estate segment. Its portfolio consists of single-tenant retail, industrial, and select non-discretionary properties leased on long-term contracts to a diversified base of corporate tenants. Under a "triple-net" lease structure, the tenant rather than the landlord bears the cost of property taxes, insurance, and maintenance, so the company's rental income translates into operating cash flow with a relatively predictable margin. The portfolio runs into thousands of properties and tens of thousands of leases when counted across the company's various property and tenant categories. Geographic exposure has historically been concentrated in the US, with a more recent expansion into select international markets including the UK and continental Europe.
As a REIT, O is required by US tax law to distribute the bulk of its taxable income to shareholders. This structural requirement — not a discretionary management choice — is what enables the high payout ratio. In exchange for distributing the income, the REIT itself avoids most corporate-level income tax; the tax burden shifts to the shareholder, who receives the distribution. This is the standard REIT model in the US, and it explains why high-quality REITs like O can sustain mid-single-digit to high-single-digit yields without raising solvency concerns the way an over-distributing operating company would.
Credit quality: O carries investment-grade credit ratings, supported by long-dated lease maturities and a high occupancy rate that historically runs above 98%. Expense ratio is not applicable to individual stocks — the figure you'll see in the calculator above is zero. The dividend has not been cut in the company's modern history; instead, the cadence has been continuous small raises rather than periodic large ones, which produces a smoother but slower upward path than the typical Dividend King.
How O pays dividends
O pays cash dividends every month, on a calendar-aligned cadence. The ex-dividend date typically falls in the final days of one month, and the pay date falls in the middle of the following month — so a holder who buys shares before the late-month ex-date receives the next mid-month cash payment. The board typically announces small increases multiple times per year rather than one large annual hike, and each announcement is for a marginally higher monthly per-share amount. The result is a slowly-but-frequently rising step pattern in the dividend stream.
For holders using DRIP through a broker, each monthly distribution reinvests automatically into additional shares at the prevailing market price. Because the cadence is monthly rather than quarterly, the compounding mechanic operates three times as frequently as for a typical quarterly stock — every month a new layer of shares is added, and those new shares immediately participate in the following month's distribution. Over a multi-year window this monthly compounding adds a small but measurable boost compared to a quarterly equivalent with the same effective annual yield, because the reinvested cash starts earning further yield sooner.
The cash that funds the dividend comes from the company's funds-from-operations (FFO) — rental income net of operating costs and interest expense — rather than from net income as reported under GAAP. FFO is the standard cash-flow measure for REITs because GAAP net income includes large non-cash depreciation charges on real estate that don't reflect the underlying cash generation. The dividend has historically run at a high percentage of FFO, which is the structural design of a REIT but means that retained cash for organic growth is modest; the company funds new acquisitions primarily through external capital raises (debt issuances and secondary equity offerings) rather than retained earnings.
Recent growth pattern: the per-share monthly dividend grows by a fraction of a cent per increase, with multiple increases per year. Aggregated over a year, the trailing 12-month dividend amount typically rises in the low-to-mid single digits — slower than a fast-growing Dividend Aristocrat in another sector, but consistent. The calculator on this page handles the monthly cadence automatically through the payment-frequency field; you can use the trailing dividend growth rate or override it with a custom rate if you want to model a more conservative or optimistic path.
Who O suits
O suits investors who specifically want a monthly cash flow rather than a quarterly one, and who value income predictability over growth potential or capital appreciation. The monthly cadence is a meaningful feature for investors using dividend income to cover regular monthly expenses — the cash arrives in the same rhythm the bills arrive. Quarterly payers, by contrast, require either a cash buffer between distributions or three other holdings staggered across the calendar to produce a monthly stream.
In taxable accounts, O's distributions are classified as ordinary REIT dividends rather than qualified dividends — they don't get the preferential long-term capital-gains tax rate. A portion of the annual distribution is sometimes reclassified as return of capital, which defers tax by reducing cost basis rather than taxing it currently; the exact split is published on the year-end 1099-DIV. Investors in higher marginal tax brackets often prefer to hold O inside a tax-advantaged wrapper (IRA, Roth IRA, 401(k)) to avoid paying ordinary-income rates on the monthly stream. In a Roth IRA in particular, the monthly distributions reinvest with no current tax friction.
Compared to monthly-paying covered-call ETFs like JEPI or QYLD, O is a fundamentally different shape of income. JEPI's monthly distribution is funded by option premium income on a large-cap equity book and varies meaningfully month-to-month; O's monthly distribution is funded by rental income on long-dated leases and is one of the most stable cash streams in the US dividend universe. The yield profiles can look superficially similar but the underlying risk drivers are not. An investor who prefers contractual income from long-term leases will find O closer to their preference; an investor who is comfortable with option-premium volatility for a higher headline yield will look at JEPI or its cousins.
As with any single-stock position, O carries company-specific risks — including tenant concentration, the credit health of the largest tenants, the path of long-term interest rates (which affect REIT valuations and refinancing costs), and the company's continued ability to access capital markets for growth. This content is educational only; it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold O, and individual circumstances vary.
Hypothetical scenarios
Scenario 1: $10,000 invested at O's IPO in 1994
Consider a hypothetical purchase of $10,000 of Realty Income shares at the company's initial public offering in 1994. The IPO price implied a per-share figure in the single digits, so $10,000 of initial capital would have purchased many hundreds of shares. From inception, the company began paying monthly dividends; by reinvesting those distributions through DRIP, the share count grew by a small fraction every single month — twelve compounding events per year rather than four.
Over the following three decades, three forces compounded together against the same initial position. First, the per-share monthly dividend grew from the original level to several multiples higher through the company's pattern of frequent small raises; aggregated over thirty-plus years of continuous monthly increases, the per-share figure today is many times the IPO-era figure. Second, the share count grew as every monthly distribution purchased additional fractional shares at the prevailing price; the monthly cadence accelerates this growth meaningfully compared to a quarterly equivalent. Third, the share price climbed substantially from the IPO level, with the typical drawdowns and recoveries one would expect across multiple economic cycles and interest-rate regimes.
The illustrative outcome is not a precise dollar figure — actual returns depend on the exact reinvestment prices, taxes paid along the way, and the specific entry timing within the IPO window. The structural point is that O's combination of a monthly cadence, a multi-decade streak of unbroken payments, and a slow-but-frequent dividend growth pattern produces an income line at the end of the window that is many times the income paid in year one on the same initial position. Realty Income is offered as a structural illustration of monthly compounding over a long horizon, not as 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 O. 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 immediately joins the share base eligible for the following month's distribution. Each month, the dividend received from all accumulated shares is also reinvested, adding more shares at the prevailing price. Because both the contribution cadence and the distribution cadence are monthly, the two flows align cleanly — there is no quarterly waiting period between dividend reinvestments. Over 20 years this monthly dual-track accumulation produces a position where the annual dividend income alone is a meaningful figure relative to the cumulative contributions paid in.
What's worth focusing on in the calculator is not the year-20 portfolio total but the monthly dividend column in the projection table. The first few years are slow because the share base is still being built. By year ten the share base is large enough that the monthly distribution has grown to many multiples of the original level. By year twenty the monthly income has compounded substantially, and a non-trivial portion of new monthly investments is being effectively funded by the dividend stream itself rather than fresh contributions. That is the structural design of a long-horizon monthly accumulation in a stable REIT.
These scenarios assume the historical pattern of monthly dividend growth continues at a similar rate. Real outcomes depend on O's future capital allocation, REIT-specific tax treatment in your account, the path of long-term interest rates, and the broader US real estate cycle. 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.