T Dividend Calculator
Dividend growth rate (CAGR)
| Year | Yield | Div / share | Annual income | Yield on cost | Cumulative income | Portfolio value | Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4.7% | $1.11 | $450.00 | 3.6% | $450.00 | $12,309 | 524.09 |
| 2 | 4.2% | $0.95 | $496.88 | 3.4% | $946.88 | $14,555 | 650.42 |
| 3 | 3.8% | $0.81 | $527.05 | 3.1% | $1,474 | $16,724 | 784.38 |
| 4 | 3.4% | $0.69 | $543.25 | 2.8% | $2,017 | $18,807 | 925.75 |
| 5 | 3.1% | $0.59 | $548.00 | 2.5% | $2,565 | $20,796 | 1074.37 |
| 6 | 2.7% | $0.51 | $543.57 | 2.2% | $3,109 | $22,687 | 1230.12 |
| 7 | 2.5% | $0.43 | $531.94 | 2.0% | $3,641 | $24,477 | 1392.94 |
| 8 | 2.2% | $0.37 | $514.82 | 1.8% | $4,155 | $26,166 | 1562.82 |
| 9 | 2.0% | $0.32 | $493.68 | 1.6% | $4,649 | $27,755 | 1739.83 |
| 10 | 1.8% | $0.27 | $469.74 | 1.4% | $5,119 | $29,245 | 1924.07 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-10 | $0.28 | 4.2% | 4.2% | $26.46 |
| 2026-01-12 | $0.28 | 4.7% | 4.7% | $23.74 |
| 2025-10-10 | $0.28 | 4.3% | 4.3% | $25.87 |
| 2025-07-10 | $0.28 | 4.0% | 4.0% | $27.62 |
| 2025-04-10 | $0.28 | 4.2% | 4.2% | $26.39 |
| 2025-01-10 | $0.28 | 5.1% | 5.1% | $21.69 |
| 2024-10-10 | $0.28 | 5.2% | 5.2% | $21.22 |
| 2024-07-10 | $0.28 | 5.9% | 5.9% | $18.74 |
| 2024-04-09 | $0.28 | 6.6% | 6.6% | $16.90 |
| 2024-01-09 | $0.28 | 6.5% | 6.5% | $16.95 |
| 2023-10-06 | $0.28 | 7.7% | 7.7% | $14.45 |
| 2023-07-07 | $0.28 | 8.9% | 7.1% | $15.61 |
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 T
AT&T Inc. — ticker T — is one of the two large US wireless carriers and a long-running income stock, but the dividend story it carries today is materially different from the one many longtime holders remember. AT&T cut its dividend in 2022 following the Warner Bros. Discovery spinoff. The current dividend reflects the post-spinoff capital structure and is NOT a continuation of the prior roughly thirty-year increase streak. Any reference to AT&T as a "Dividend Aristocrat" describes a status the company forfeited in 2022; it should not be used to anchor expectations about the present cash distribution.
The mechanics of the 2022 reset matter for anyone modeling future income. AT&T spun off its WarnerMedia assets and merged them with Discovery to form Warner Bros. Discovery. Existing AT&T shareholders received a distribution of WBD shares at the time of the spinoff, and AT&T simultaneously reduced its per-share cash dividend to reflect the smaller, more focused company that remained after WarnerMedia left. The combined value of the WBD shares plus the lower post-reset AT&T dividend was the design intent of the transaction; the headline cash dividend, however, dropped meaningfully, and the consecutive-increase streak ended at that point.
The post-2022 AT&T is a different shape of business than the pre-spinoff company. It now focuses on US wireless service, fiber broadband, and business connectivity, and no longer carries the media properties that contributed to the prior cash flows. Management has positioned the dividend at a sustainable level relative to the new free-cash-flow base and has prioritized debt reduction over dividend growth in the post-spinoff capital plan. The current dividend has been held flat or grown only modestly since 2022, and AT&T has signaled that maintaining the dividend and paying down debt take priority over restarting an aggressive growth path.
AT&T operates in the Communication Services sector, specifically wireless telecom. The competitive structure is a US wireless market dominated by three carriers — AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile — with broadly similar service tiers, intense price competition, and elevated capital intensity from the multi-year 5G buildout and ongoing fiber expansion. The company carries a meaningful debt load left over from earlier acquisitions, and management has been steadily working that debt down post-spinoff. Credit-rating agencies maintain AT&T at investment grade, though the rating sits lower in the investment-grade range than peers with smaller debt loads.
For a dividend-focused reader, the cleanest way to think about AT&T today is as a high-current-yield telecom stock with a single-digit payout-growth outlook and a recently reset dividend base, not as a continuation of the pre-2022 streak. The yield is meaningful — typically in the mid-to-high single digits — but the underlying business is in a mature, capital-intensive industry, and the path of the dividend from here depends on free cash flow rather than on a historical streak.
How T pays dividends
AT&T pays cash dividends quarterly, on a February–May–August–November cadence. The board declares the per-share amount each quarter; the ex-dividend date typically falls roughly two weeks before the pay date, and the pay date falls in the first or second week of the relevant 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 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 AT&T. 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 operating free 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 post-2022 growth pattern has been very different from the pre-2022 streak. AT&T has either held the per-share quarterly amount flat or raised it only modestly in any given year since the reset. Whether AT&T returns to a clear annual-growth cadence in coming years depends on free-cash-flow generation relative to capex requirements and on management's prioritization of debt reduction versus capital return. The calculator on this page uses a recent-period dividend growth rate to project the income line forward; given the structural shift in 2022, modeling AT&T with a conservative growth assumption is generally more honest than extrapolating from longer historical windows that span the cut.
AT&T's dividends are qualified for the long-term capital-gains rate in taxable accounts, given the standard holding-period rule (more than sixty days during the 121-day window centered on the ex-date). The qualified-dividend treatment is structurally meaningful for high-yield stocks like AT&T 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 T suits
AT&T suits investors who want a high current cash yield from a US telecom and are comfortable with a slow-growth income line, a meaningful debt load, and the recent history of a dividend reset. The trade-off is straightforward: the yield is substantially above the broader US equity market average, but the growth rate of that yield is modest, and the underlying business operates in a capital-intensive industry where 5G and fiber capex will continue to be material line items. The dividend looks adequately covered by current free cash flow, but coverage is tighter than at lower-yield peers, and any sustained shortfall in cash flow would put pressure on the payout.
The comparison readers most often want is AT&T versus Verizon — the two largest US incumbent wireless carriers, both yielding in similar territory. The key contrast is that Verizon has maintained an unbroken streak of consecutive annual dividend increases since 2007, while AT&T cut in 2022 and reset its streak to zero. For an investor who weights dividend continuity heavily, that distinction matters; for an investor focused purely on current cash yield, the two stocks look more alike than different. A separate comparison worth thinking through is AT&T versus a diversified high-yield dividend ETF such as VYM or SPYD, which spreads the yield across many companies and removes the single-name concentration risk that comes with holding AT&T directly.
The current yield level itself deserves caution. A mid-to-high single-digit dividend yield is partly explained by the slower expected growth and the 2022 cut, not just by management generosity — high yield in a mature telecom is the market's pricing of lower future growth and modestly higher business risk relative to lower-yield peers in less capital-intensive industries. Combined with the elevated debt level and ongoing 5G capex pressure, the high yield should be read as part of a complete risk picture rather than as an isolated positive feature.
In taxable accounts, AT&T's dividends benefit from qualified-dividend treatment, which is structurally relevant for a high-yield name. 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 AT&T, and individual circumstances vary.
Hypothetical scenarios
Scenario 1: $10,000 invested in AT&T after the May 2022 dividend reset
Consider a hypothetical purchase of $10,000 of AT&T stock immediately after the May 2022 dividend reset that followed the Warner Bros. Discovery spinoff. We use this entry point deliberately: the pre-2022 dividend record reflects a different company with a substantially larger and now-discontinued cash distribution, and treating the pre- and post-reset periods as a continuous holding overstates both the historical yield-on-cost and the historical compound growth of the income line. Starting the scenario after the reset is the honest framing for an investor who would buy AT&T today.
At the post-reset entry price, the $10,000 would have purchased several hundred shares — the exact count depends on the entry-day open, but the position size is sufficient to make the quarterly cash payments material in dollar terms. With the post-reset quarterly dividend, the year-one cash distribution from the position is large in absolute terms relative to typical lower-yield dividend stocks, because the entry yield itself is in the mid-to-high single digits. From the start of the scenario through to the present, with quarterly distributions reinvested via DRIP, two forces compound. The per-share dividend has been roughly flat or grown only modestly since the reset, so the income line has expanded mostly through share-count growth from DRIP rather than from per-share dividend growth. Share-count growth alone, with a high entry yield, can still produce a meaningful compounding effect even when per-share growth is muted.
The illustrative outcome is not a precise dollar figure. It depends on the exact reinvestment prices over the holding window, the path of the AT&T share price, dividend taxes paid along the way in a taxable account, and any future changes to the dividend itself. The structural point is that a high-yield, low-growth dividend stock looks meaningfully different on a multi-year DRIP than a moderate-yield, high-growth grower does — more of the long-run compounding comes from share-count expansion and less from per-share dividend growth. This is offered as a structural illustration of how a post-reset AT&T position works, not as a forecast of future returns.
Scenario 2: $50,000 today plus $500/month for 20 years
Consider a hypothetical accumulation strategy in AT&T: $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 — flat to low-single-digit annual growth — to reflect the post-2022 trajectory rather than extrapolating from pre-cut history.
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 AT&T's entry yield is high relative to a typical dividend grower, 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 a flat per-share dividend, because the share count has grown substantially via both contributions and reinvestment.
What's worth focusing on in the calculator is how sensitive the projection is to the dividend growth assumption. 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 simultaneously and reaches a higher terminal value. The post-reset trajectory has been close to the low end of that range; modeling a conservative growth path is the structurally honest approach for AT&T. These scenarios assume the post-2022 dividend remains intact and grows along the modeled path — neither of which is guaranteed. Real outcomes depend on AT&T's future free cash flow, the path of US telecom competition, 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.