PFE 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 | 3.7% | $0.86 | $334.00 | 2.7% | $334.00 | $11,763 | 499.24 |
| 2 | 4.3% | $0.92 | $459.42 | 3.1% | $793.42 | $13,495 | 625.99 |
| 3 | 5.0% | $0.98 | $616.39 | 3.6% | $1,410 | $15,231 | 772.11 |
| 4 | 5.8% | $1.05 | $813.50 | 4.2% | $2,223 | $17,007 | 942.25 |
| 5 | 6.8% | $1.13 | $1,062 | 4.8% | $3,286 | $18,870 | 1142.58 |
| 6 | 8.0% | $1.21 | $1,378 | 5.6% | $4,664 | $20,877 | 1381.51 |
| 7 | 9.3% | $1.29 | $1,783 | 6.7% | $6,447 | $23,100 | 1670.62 |
| 8 | 10.9% | $1.38 | $2,307 | 7.9% | $8,754 | $25,634 | 2026.17 |
| 9 | 12.8% | $1.48 | $2,994 | 9.5% | $11,748 | $28,610 | 2471.45 |
| 10 | 14.9% | $1.58 | $3,908 | 11.5% | $15,656 | $32,206 | 3040.53 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-08 | $0.43 | 8.4% | 3.3% | $25.68 |
| 2026-01-23 | $0.43 | 8.4% | 3.4% | $25.65 |
| 2025-11-07 | $0.43 | 8.8% | 3.5% | $24.43 |
| 2025-07-25 | $0.43 | 8.6% | 3.5% | $24.79 |
| 2025-05-09 | $0.43 | 7.6% | 3.9% | $22.28 |
| 2025-01-24 | $0.43 | 6.5% | 3.3% | $26.09 |
| 2024-11-08 | $0.42 | 6.3% | 3.1% | $26.72 |
| 2024-07-26 | $0.42 | 5.4% | 2.7% | $30.77 |
| 2024-05-09 | $0.42 | 7.3% | 3.0% | $28.18 |
| 2024-01-25 | $0.42 | 7.5% | 3.1% | $27.47 |
| 2023-11-09 | $0.41 | 5.5% | 2.8% | $29.68 |
| 2023-07-27 | $0.41 | 5.6% | 2.3% | $36.20 |
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 PFE
Pfizer Inc. — ticker PFE — is one of the largest US pharmaceutical companies, and its dividend record carries a piece of recent history that every income-focused reader needs to know about before modeling the income line. Pfizer cut its dividend in 2009 during the Wyeth acquisition and has been rebuilding since. The current rebuild streak is approximately fourteen years long and is not a continuation of any pre-2009 history. Treating Pfizer as having a multi-decade unbroken streak — a "Dividend Aristocrat" or "Dividend King" — is wrong: the 2009 cut definitively ends the prior streak, and the relevant track record for an investor entering today is the post-2009 rebuild, not the longer pre-cut history. Most reputable dividend-tracker services correctly classify Pfizer as a non-Aristocrat for this reason, even though the company has been raising the dividend annually since 2010.
The mechanics of the 2009 cut are useful context. Pfizer announced the Wyeth acquisition in early 2009 — a $68 billion deal that materially expanded the company's scale and product portfolio — and simultaneously cut its quarterly dividend by approximately fifty percent to free up balance-sheet capacity for the acquisition. The cut was therefore deliberate and strategic rather than driven by an underlying earnings collapse; it was Pfizer's choice to fund the Wyeth deal partly via reduced capital return rather than entirely via debt. The rebuild started the following year: Pfizer resumed annual dividend increases in 2010, and the company has continued raising the per-share payout every year since, gradually rebuilding the cash payout level toward and beyond the pre-cut peak.
Pfizer operates in the Healthcare sector, specifically branded pharmaceuticals. The portfolio includes products in oncology (Ibrance, Xtandi), immunology and inflammation (Xeljanz, Eliquis joint with Bristol-Myers Squibb), rare disease, and vaccines (including the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and Prevnar pneumococcal vaccine). COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral (Paxlovid) revenue produced an exceptional earnings spike in 2021 and 2022; that revenue has since normalized sharply as the pandemic transitioned out of acute phase, which is a structural piece of the current yield story and worth flagging for any reader modeling the dividend forward. Pfizer also faces a series of patent cliffs in the back half of the 2020s — including the loss of exclusivity on Eliquis and other meaningful contributors — and management has been deploying acquisition capital (Seagen, the oncology specialist, was the largest of the recent deals) to refill the post-cliff pipeline.
The dividend mandate post-2009 is real but more constrained than at the longer-streak Kings. Management has continued annual increases through the rebuild window, but the size of recent hikes has been modest, reflecting the dual priorities of continuing the rebuild and managing the post-COVID revenue normalization simultaneously. 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.
How PFE pays dividends
Pfizer pays cash dividends quarterly, on a March–June–September–December cadence. The board declares the per-share amount each quarter; the ex-dividend date typically falls in the last week of the first month of the cycle, and the pay date falls roughly five to six 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 scheduled 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. The registry on this page reflects the most recent payment cadence as detected from public dividend records; readers comparing against external sources should verify against the company's most recent investor-relations declarations.
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 Pfizer, 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 US dividend stock — there is no managed-distribution policy, no covered-call overlay, and the cash that funds the dividend comes from operating free cash flow generated by the post-COVID-normalized pharmaceutical portfolio.
Recent growth pattern: Pfizer has typically raised the per-share amount once per year, with the new rate taking effect on the following payment. The size of the annual hike has historically run in the low single digits during the post-2009 rebuild, slower than at most pharma peers, reflecting the dual priorities of continuing the rebuild path and managing the post-COVID revenue normalization and upcoming patent cliffs. The calculator on this page uses a recent dividend growth rate to project the income line forward; given the structural dynamics of the post-COVID normalization and the upcoming patent cliff window, modeling Pfizer with a conservative growth assumption is generally more honest than extrapolating from longer historical windows that span the cut.
Pfizer's dividends are qualified for the long-term capital-gains rate in taxable accounts, given the standard sixty-day holding-period rule. The qualified-dividend treatment is structurally meaningful for higher-yield stocks like current-period Pfizer because the absolute dollars of dividend received are larger than for a low-yield grower, so the tax delta between ordinary-income and qualified-dividend rates compounds to a larger dollar figure over a long holding period. In tax-advantaged accounts, the qualified-dividend treatment is moot because no current-year tax applies.
Who PFE suits
Pfizer suits investors who want a high current cash yield from a large US pharma and are comfortable holding through the post-COVID-revenue normalization and an upcoming patent-cliff window. The current yield is meaningful — typically in the mid-single-digit to six-percent range — but the headline yield level is partly a function of the share price decline since the 2021–2022 COVID-vaccine peak rather than a deliberate generosity premium from management. After the COVID vaccine and antiviral revenue surge in 2021 and 2022, Pfizer's share price ran up sharply; as that revenue normalized through 2023 and 2024 and the upcoming patent cliffs became more visible to the market, the share price declined materially. A lower price against a roughly maintained per-share dividend mathematically produces a higher reported yield. The honest reading is that the current high yield reflects the market's pricing of post-COVID rollover risk and patent-cliff uncertainty, not an unusually generous capital-return policy.
The comparison readers most often want is Pfizer versus other large-cap US pharma names. Against Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer offers a higher current yield but a shorter and broken streak record — JNJ is a Dividend King with sixty-plus years of unbroken increases, while Pfizer's current streak counts from 2010 after the 2009 cut. Against AbbVie, Pfizer offers a different concentration profile — AbbVie's exposure is centered on the post-Humira immunology franchise (Skyrizi, Rinvoq) plus aesthetics and oncology, while Pfizer's exposure is broader across oncology, immunology, vaccines, and rare disease, with a more visible near-term patent-cliff list. Against Merck (MRK), the two are closer peers in terms of business mix and patent-cliff exposure, with the streak record favoring Merck.
In taxable accounts, Pfizer's dividends benefit from qualified-dividend treatment. In tax-advantaged accounts the treatment is moot. As with any single-stock position, this content is educational only; it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold Pfizer, and individual circumstances vary. Pharmaceutical-sector-specific risks — including the trajectory of COVID-related revenue normalization, the near-term patent-cliff window through the back half of the 2020s, and the integration outcome of recent acquisitions such as the 2023 Seagen deal — should be weighed against the post-2009 rebuild record.
Hypothetical scenarios
Scenario 1: $10,000 invested in Pfizer after the 2010 dividend rebuild began
Consider a hypothetical purchase of $10,000 of Pfizer stock at the start of 2010, immediately after the 2009 dividend cut that accompanied the Wyeth acquisition and at the point where the rebuild began. We use this entry point deliberately. The pre-2009 dividend record reflects a different capital-return policy and a now-discontinued streak; treating the pre- and post-cut periods as a continuous holding overstates both the historical yield-on-cost and the historical compound growth of the income line. Starting the scenario at the beginning of the rebuild is the honest framing for an income investor evaluating Pfizer's track record today.
At the post-cut entry price, the $10,000 would have purchased roughly five hundred fifty shares. With quarterly dividends reinvested via DRIP through 2010 to the present, two main forces compound. First, the per-share dividend grew each year during the rebuild — the annual hike during this window has run in the low single digits, slower than at most pharma peers but unbroken. Second, the share count grew as DRIP reinvested every quarterly distribution at the prevailing market price. The share price climbed substantially from 2010 through the 2021–2022 COVID-vaccine peak, then declined materially as COVID revenue normalized and patent-cliff visibility grew; a long-horizon DRIP holder who continued reinvesting through both the run-up and the decline would have accumulated additional share count at the lower post-peak prices, which itself contributes to the income line even when per-share dividend growth is moderate.
The illustrative outcome is not a precise dollar figure. It depends on the exact reinvestment prices across the full holding window, dividend taxes paid along the way in a taxable account, and the specific entry and exit timing. The structural point is that Pfizer's post-2009 rebuild is a meaningfully different shape of return than its pre-2009 record — slower per-share dividend growth, a price path strongly shaped by the COVID-vaccine cycle, and a current yield level that partly reflects post-COVID share-price decline rather than an unusually high underlying payout ratio. PFE 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 in Pfizer: $50,000 starting capital, plus $500 per month added on a regular cadence for 20 years. 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. Use a conservative dividend growth assumption — low single digits, consistent with the post-2009 rebuild trajectory rather than extrapolating from pre-2009 history that does not reflect the current policy or revenue base.
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. Because Pfizer's entry yield is high relative to a typical dividend grower — partly because of the recent share-price decline against a maintained per-share dividend — the DRIP component contributes a relatively larger share of total share-count growth than the same DCA setup would for a lower-yield stock. Over 20 years, this dual-track accumulation builds a position whose annual cash distribution is meaningful even at low per-share growth, because the share count has grown substantially via both contributions and reinvestment.
What's worth focusing on is how sensitive the projection is to the dividend growth assumption and to the implicit assumption that the current dividend is maintained through the patent-cliff window. With 0% per-share growth, the income line grows mostly through share-count expansion. With a 2–3% per-share growth assumption, the income line grows along two axes and reaches a higher terminal value. Modeling Pfizer with a conservative growth path is the structurally honest approach during the post-COVID normalization and patent-cliff window. Real outcomes depend on Pfizer's free cash flow through the patent-cliff window, the integration outcome of recent acquisitions, US drug-pricing policy, tax treatment, 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.