SO Dividend Calculator
Dividend growth rate (CAGR)
| Year | Yield | Div / share | Annual income | Yield on cost | Cumulative income | Portfolio value | Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3.0% | $2.98 | $318.00 | 2.6% | $318.00 | $13,598 | 134.67 |
| 2 | 2.8% | $3.07 | $412.91 | 2.8% | $730.91 | $17,574 | 161.49 |
| 3 | 2.7% | $3.16 | $509.59 | 3.0% | $1,240 | $21,960 | 187.23 |
| 4 | 2.6% | $3.25 | $608.05 | 3.1% | $1,849 | $26,789 | 211.91 |
| 5 | 2.5% | $3.34 | $708.32 | 3.2% | $2,557 | $32,098 | 235.58 |
| 6 | 2.3% | $3.44 | $810.42 | 3.3% | $3,367 | $37,926 | 258.26 |
| 7 | 2.2% | $3.54 | $914.38 | 3.4% | $4,282 | $44,315 | 279.98 |
| 8 | 2.1% | $3.64 | $1,020 | 3.5% | $5,302 | $51,311 | 300.78 |
| 9 | 2.0% | $3.75 | $1,128 | 3.6% | $6,430 | $58,963 | 320.69 |
| 10 | 1.9% | $3.86 | $1,238 | 3.6% | $7,668 | $67,324 | 339.74 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-18 | $0.76 | 4.0% | 3.2% | $93.68 |
| 2026-02-17 | $0.74 | 4.0% | 3.2% | $92.00 |
| 2025-11-17 | $0.74 | 4.0% | 3.3% | $90.58 |
| 2025-08-18 | $0.74 | 3.9% | 3.2% | $92.85 |
| 2025-05-19 | $0.74 | 3.2% | 3.3% | $89.48 |
| 2025-02-18 | $0.72 | 3.4% | 3.4% | $85.89 |
| 2024-11-18 | $0.72 | 3.2% | 3.3% | $88.04 |
| 2024-08-19 | $0.72 | 3.3% | 3.3% | $86.94 |
| 2024-05-17 | $0.72 | 3.5% | 3.6% | $79.54 |
| 2024-02-16 | $0.70 | 5.2% | 4.2% | $66.48 |
| 2023-11-17 | $0.70 | 5.0% | 4.0% | $69.77 |
| 2023-08-18 | $0.70 | 4.1% | 4.1% | $67.81 |
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 SO
The Southern Company — ticker SO — is one of the largest regulated electric utilities in the United States, serving roughly nine million customers across Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Southern has raised its dividend in each of the last twenty-three-plus consecutive years, placing it near the long-streak end of the US utility cohort even though it has not yet crossed the twenty-five-year Aristocrat threshold. Equally relevant for a long-term holder, Southern has paid an uninterrupted dividend for more than seventy-five years — the per-share amount has been raised, held flat, but never cut, across multiple business cycles, the deregulation reform period of the 1990s, the 2008-09 financial crisis, and the 2020 COVID demand shock. That record places Southern in the top bracket of US utilities for distribution continuity, even when measured against the slightly longer-streak names.
The defining capital-allocation chapter of the past fifteen years at Southern has been the Vogtle nuclear project. Southern's subsidiary Georgia Power led the construction of Vogtle Units 3 and 4, the first new nuclear units built in the United States in roughly three decades, at the Vogtle site in eastern Georgia. The project ran years behind its original schedule and tens of billions of dollars over its original budget — Unit 3 entered commercial operation in mid-2023 and Unit 4 in mid-2024, against an original target of 2016-17 for both units. The cost overruns and schedule delays drove credit-rating downgrade pressure, triggered state regulatory friction in Georgia, and tested investor patience across the better part of a decade. Through all of it, Southern continued its annual dividend increases. The Vogtle completion is now a defining capex chapter that has shifted from being an open balance-sheet risk to being a long-lived rate-base asset producing regulated cash flow — a structural improvement to the consolidated earnings profile that was a long time coming and arrived materially late and over budget.
Southern operates in the Utilities sector, specifically regulated electric utility, with smaller regulated natural-gas distribution and unregulated generation segments. The business is organized around state-specific subsidiaries — Georgia Power, Alabama Power, Mississippi Power — and Southern Power, the unregulated wholesale generation arm. The generation mix is traditional in shape: a significant nuclear footprint (Vogtle plus Hatch and Farley), natural-gas generation as the bulk of fossil capacity, and an ongoing coal-phaseout trajectory that has reduced coal's share of generation materially across the past decade. Southern maintains an investment-grade credit profile (BBB+/Baa2-rated), supported by the regulated revenue stream of the state utility subsidiaries. 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 SO pays dividends
The Southern Company 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 second or third week of the second month of each quarter, and the pay date falls in the second week of the following month. 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 Southern, 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 the cash that funds the dividend comes from the regulated rate-base earnings of the state utility subsidiaries plus the wholesale-generation revenue from Southern Power.
Recent growth pattern: Southern has typically raised the quarterly per-share amount once per year, with the new rate announced in the spring and taking effect on the June payment. The size of the annual hike has run in the low single digits — typically two-to-three-cent increases per share per quarter, which translates into roughly two-to-three percent annual growth on the per-share line. The five-year trailing dividend growth rate has run in the low single digits, consistent with the regulated-utility profile and constrained by the Vogtle-era capex pressure on capital allocation. With Vogtle now complete, the regulated rate base has stepped up to absorb the cost recovery on the new nuclear units, which provides a structural support to the dividend growth trajectory. The calculator on this page uses a recent dividend growth rate to project the income line forward; for Southern, modeling with a low-single-digit growth assumption is structurally honest because the regulated capital-allocation framework imposes a ceiling closely tied to rate-base growth.
Southern's dividends are qualified for the long-term capital-gains rate in taxable accounts, given the standard sixty-day holding-period rule. In tax-advantaged accounts the qualified-dividend treatment is moot because no current-year tax applies. The yield typically sits in the three-to-four-percent range — substantially above the broader US equity market average and consistent with the utility-as-bond-proxy positioning.
Who SO suits
The Southern Company suits investors who want a stable current cash yield from a regulated US utility with a long-running annual-increase record and an even longer record of uninterrupted distributions, and who accept that the underlying dividend growth rate is in the low single digits rather than the mid-to-high single digits of higher-growth dividend stocks. The trade-off is the classic utility profile: a high current yield in exchange for slow dividend growth, supported by regulated cash flows that are structurally insulated from commodity prices and discretionary demand. The Vogtle capex chapter is now a closed risk on the balance-sheet side and an open contributor on the regulated-revenue side, which is a structural improvement to the consolidated earnings profile that took many years to play out.
The comparison readers most often want is SO versus other large US regulated utilities — Duke Energy (DUK), NextEra Energy (NEE), and American Electric Power (AEP) being the most common reference points. Against DUK, Southern and Duke occupy similar profiles in the regulated-utility cohort — both yielding in the three-to-four-percent range, both with multi-decade increase records, both serving large Southeastern customer bases. The distinctive feature of Southern is the Vogtle nuclear addition and the broader traditional generation mix (nuclear plus natural gas with declining coal); Duke is comparable on overall profile. Against NEE, Southern is the slower-growth, traditional-generation alternative: NEE's blend of regulated Florida utility (FPL) with the NEER renewable-generation arm produces a higher dividend growth rate at a lower current yield, while Southern's traditional generation mix produces the higher-yield, slower-growth profile.
The interest-rate sensitivity is structurally relevant for any utility holding. When the Fed raises short-term rates and long-term Treasury yields rise, utility share prices tend to fall as the income spread above Treasuries compresses; when long-term rates fall, utility share prices tend to rise. This is a recurring feature of holding utilities, not a Southern-specific dynamic, and the relative attractiveness of a three-and-a-half-percent utility yield depends materially on the level of risk-free rates at the time of evaluation. Combined with the regulated-rate-case exposure across three state regulatory regimes and the historical Vogtle execution risk that is now substantially behind the company, Southern's yield should be read as a complete-picture position rather than as an isolated income feature.
In taxable accounts, Southern'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 Southern, and individual circumstances vary. Utility-specific risks — including state regulatory outcomes on rate-case filings, ongoing capex execution at Plant Vogtle and across the broader fleet, interest-rate sensitivity, the pace of coal phaseout, and the long-run path of the regulated rate base — should be weighed against the long-streak dividend continuity record.
Hypothetical scenarios
Scenario 1: $10,000 invested in Southern Company through the Vogtle window
Consider a hypothetical purchase of $10,000 of Southern Company stock ten years ago, held through to the present with quarterly dividends reinvested via DRIP. The ten-year window for Southern is particularly informative because it brackets the second half of the Vogtle nuclear construction project — a stretch during which Vogtle Units 3 and 4 ran progressively further over budget and behind schedule, drove credit-rating downgrade pressure, generated state regulatory friction with Georgia, and tested investor patience over multiple years. Through every quarter of that pressure, Southern continued its annual-increase cadence, with the new per-share quarterly amount announced each spring and taking effect on the June payment. The streak held even as Unit 3 ultimately came online in mid-2023 and Unit 4 in mid-2024, both years late and many billions over their original budgets.
Three structural forces operate over the holding window. First, the per-share dividend grew each year at a low-single-digit pace, with the increases announced even in the years of most acute Vogtle-related capex and credit-rating pressure. Second, the share count grew as DRIP reinvested every quarterly distribution; given Southern's entry yield of roughly four percent, DRIP contributed a structurally larger share of share-count growth than at lower-yield names, and the cumulative DRIP share buildup over a ten-year window is meaningful. Third, the share price moved with two overlapping drivers — long-term interest rates (the standard utility-as-bond-proxy dynamic) and Vogtle-related operating and balance-sheet headlines — with the Vogtle-completion newsflow shifting from a recurring overhang to a settled cost-recovery story across the late stage of the window.
The illustrative outcome is not a precise dollar figure. The structural point is that Southern's record of maintaining the annual-increase cadence through a defining capex chapter that ran years over budget is structurally meaningful evidence on the company's distribution discipline. This is offered as a structural illustration of how a regulated-utility DRIP position compounds through both interest-rate cycles and project-specific capex pressure, not as a forecast of future returns. The central uncertainty across a future window is the path of long-term interest rates, future regulatory outcomes on rate-case filings across the three state subsidiaries, and the execution of the post-Vogtle capex program.
Scenario 2: $50,000 today plus $500/month for 20 years
Consider a hypothetical accumulation strategy in Southern Company: $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, roughly three percent — consistent with Southern's long-run regulated-rate-base growth profile and acknowledging that the structural ceiling on utility dividend growth is closely tied to rate-base growth across the three state subsidiaries.
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 Southern's entry yield is high — typically three-and-a-half to four percent — the DRIP component contributes a relatively larger share of share-count growth than the same DCA setup would for a lower-yield growth stock. Over 20 years this builds a position whose annual cash distribution is meaningful, with the magnitude sensitive to the per-share growth assumption and to the timing of share-price oscillations driven by interest-rate cycles within the contribution window.
What's worth focusing on in the calculator is how sensitive the projection is to the dividend growth assumption and to whether the post-Vogtle capex program continues to produce the rate-base growth that underwrites the slow dividend growth. With 2% per-share growth, the income line grows mostly through share-count expansion from contributions and DRIP. With a 4% per-share growth assumption — at the high end of Southern's recent range, supported by Vogtle cost recovery now in the regulated rate base — the per-share line contributes a more meaningful share of total income growth. Real outcomes depend on Southern's regulated cash flow generation, the path of state utility regulation in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, the capex program timing across the post-Vogtle period, tax treatment in your specific account, interest-rate path effects on utility share prices, 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.