VZ Dividend Calculator
Dividend growth rate (CAGR)
| Year | Yield | Div / share | Annual income | Yield on cost | Cumulative income | Portfolio value | Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6.1% | $2.77 | $588.00 | 4.7% | $588.00 | $12,518 | 277.31 |
| 2 | 6.5% | $2.82 | $782.16 | 5.3% | $1,370 | $15,123 | 349.27 |
| 3 | 6.9% | $2.87 | $1,004 | 5.8% | $2,374 | $17,839 | 429.53 |
| 4 | 7.4% | $2.93 | $1,259 | 6.4% | $3,633 | $20,694 | 519.46 |
| 5 | 7.8% | $2.99 | $1,552 | 7.1% | $5,185 | $23,719 | 620.72 |
| 6 | 8.3% | $3.04 | $1,890 | 7.7% | $7,075 | $26,952 | 735.33 |
| 7 | 8.8% | $3.10 | $2,282 | 8.5% | $9,357 | $30,437 | 865.73 |
| 8 | 9.4% | $3.16 | $2,739 | 9.4% | $12,095 | $34,226 | 1014.93 |
| 9 | 10.0% | $3.22 | $3,273 | 10.4% | $15,368 | $38,384 | 1186.64 |
| 10 | 10.6% | $3.29 | $3,900 | 11.5% | $19,268 | $42,987 | 1385.46 |
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 | $0.71 | 6.0% | 6.1% | $46.04 |
| 2026-01-12 | $0.69 | 6.9% | 6.9% | $39.84 |
| 2025-10-10 | $0.69 | 6.8% | 6.9% | $39.85 |
| 2025-07-10 | $0.68 | 6.4% | 6.4% | $42.03 |
| 2025-04-10 | $0.68 | 6.3% | 6.3% | $42.92 |
| 2025-01-10 | $0.68 | 7.1% | 7.2% | $37.81 |
| 2024-10-10 | $0.68 | 6.2% | 6.3% | $42.95 |
| 2024-07-10 | $0.67 | 6.5% | 6.5% | $41.08 |
| 2024-04-09 | $0.67 | 6.5% | 6.5% | $40.84 |
| 2024-01-09 | $0.67 | 6.7% | 6.8% | $39.04 |
| 2023-10-06 | $0.67 | 8.5% | 8.6% | $30.85 |
| 2023-07-07 | $0.65 | 7.3% | 7.3% | $35.90 |
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 VZ
Verizon Communications Inc. — ticker VZ — is the largest US wireless carrier by subscriber count and one of the higher-yielding large-cap names in the US equity market. The company has raised its dividend in each of the last roughly seventeen years, with the streak running from 2007 onward, placing it firmly in the category of dividend growers though not in the longer-streak Aristocrat or King brackets. The dividend has never been cut over the streak window; each annual raise has been modest but consistent. That continuity is one of the central reasons VZ occupies a permanent place in many income-focused portfolios.
Verizon operates in the Communication Services sector, specifically US wireless telecom, with a smaller broadband and business-services footprint. The competitive structure is a three-carrier US wireless market — Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile — with broadly similar pricing tiers and intense subscriber-acquisition competition. Verizon has historically positioned itself on network quality, particularly post-5G, and the company has invested heavily in spectrum and infrastructure to support that positioning. The C-band spectrum acquisition in the early 2020s was one of the larger spectrum outlays in US telecom history and meaningfully expanded Verizon's debt load, which is a recurring topic in any discussion of the company's dividend coverage.
The dividend mandate has been a stated capital-allocation priority for Verizon's board for many years. Management has consistently maintained that the dividend takes priority over share repurchases in the capital plan, and the annual raise has been treated as a fixed feature of the calendar rather than a discretionary decision. The credit-rating profile sits in the investment-grade range, with rating agencies focused on the path of debt reduction post-spectrum-buildout and on free cash flow available to service the dividend. The balance sheet carries meaningful debt; coverage of the dividend by free cash flow is positive but not generous, which is the structural reason the yield is high.
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 current dividend has never been reduced or suspended in the streak window, even through the multi-billion-dollar spectrum capex cycle of the early 2020s.
How VZ pays dividends
Verizon 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 in the first or second week of the month preceding the pay month, 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 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 Verizon, 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 free cash flow generated by wireless service revenue, broadband, and business-services lines.
Recent growth pattern: Verizon 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 September for a November pay date). The size of the annual hike has run in the low single digits — typically a cent or two per quarter per year — which is meaningful relative to the existing per-share level but slow in percentage terms. That slow growth combined with a high entry yield produces the canonical "high yield, slow growth" income profile that defines Verizon's dividend story.
Because the increase happens once per year rather than spread over four quarters, the year-over-year dividend growth rate compounds cleanly, though at a low percentage rate. The calculator on this page uses a recent 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. Modeling Verizon with a low single-digit annual growth rate is structurally consistent with the recent trajectory.
Verizon'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 high-yield stocks like Verizon 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 meaningful figure over a long holding period.
Who VZ suits
Verizon suits investors who want a high current cash yield from a US telecom and who weight a long, unbroken dividend-growth streak as a quality signal. The yield typically sits in the high single digits, comfortably above broader US equity averages, and the annual raise has been a fixed feature for nearly two decades. The trade-off is straightforward: the growth rate of the dividend is slow, the underlying business is capital intensive, and the debt load left over from the 5G and spectrum buildout is meaningful and ongoing. 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 Verizon-versus-AT&T comparison is the most natural one for a reader weighing high-yield US telecom names. Both stocks share most of the same structural features — similar three-carrier market dynamics, similar debt loads, similar yield levels — but Verizon's unbroken streak versus AT&T's 2022 cut is the single sharpest distinction. For an investor who treats dividend continuity as a primary quality signal, Verizon carries the cleaner record. A separate comparison worth thinking through is Verizon versus a diversified high-yield dividend ETF such as VYM or SPYD, which removes the single-name concentration risk and diversifies across many high-yield names at the cost of giving up some of Verizon's specific yield level.
In taxable accounts, Verizon's dividends are qualified for the long-term capital-gains rate. This treatment is structurally important for high-yield names because the dollar amount of tax saved by qualified treatment is proportionally larger when the underlying yield is larger. In tax-advantaged accounts the treatment is moot because no current-year tax applies, and the structural advantage of holding a high-yield grower in a Roth IRA or 401(k) is the long-term compounding of share count via DRIP without tax friction.
The high current yield should be read as part of a complete picture rather than as an isolated positive. It is partly a reflection of management generosity and a long capital-return tradition, and partly a reflection of the market pricing slower growth and elevated capital intensity in the US telecom sector. As with any single-stock position, this content is educational only; it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold Verizon, and individual circumstances vary.
Hypothetical scenarios
Scenario 1: $10,000 invested in Verizon at the start of 2007
Consider a hypothetical purchase of $10,000 of Verizon stock at the start of 2007, which roughly coincides with the start of the current consecutive-increase streak. At that point Verizon was a maturing US telecom with a meaningful dividend already in place; the streak that would later extend through to the present was just beginning. The 2007 entry price implied a per-share figure in the mid-to-high thirties, and the initial $10,000 would have purchased a few hundred shares on a split-adjusted basis.
Holding from 2007 through to the present, with quarterly dividends reinvested via DRIP, three forces compound together. First, the per-share dividend has been raised each year of the streak — the cumulative effect over the multi-decade window is meaningful in per-share terms, even though each individual annual raise has been modest. Second, the share count has grown as DRIP reinvested every quarterly distribution at the prevailing market price; share count growth alone, given Verizon's relatively high yield, contributes a substantial share of the long-run compounding. Third, the share price has been broadly flat to modestly higher over long windows, with sector-specific drawdowns tied to spectrum costs and capex cycles.
The illustrative outcome is not a precise dollar figure. It depends on the exact reinvestment prices over the holding window, dividend taxes paid along the way in a taxable account, and the specific entry and exit timing. The structural point is that Verizon's "high yield, slow per-share growth" profile produces a return shape where the share-count growth side of compounding contributes more than it would for a faster-growing, lower-yield dividend stock. The annual dividend income at the end of the multi-decade window is substantially larger than the year-one income, but the path is driven more by share count than by per-share growth. This is the canonical mature-telecom dividend outcome; Verizon 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 Verizon: $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 low single-digit dividend growth assumption to reflect Verizon's recent pattern of small annual raises.
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 Verizon'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 — DCA contributions plus dividend reinvestment — produces a position whose annual cash distribution is meaningful in dollar terms even at a slow per-share growth path, because the share count itself has grown substantially.
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 driven mostly by the high entry yield on the early contributions. By year ten, share-count growth from both DCA and DRIP has materially expanded the income line. By year twenty, the income line reflects two decades of share-count compounding combined with two decades of small annual per-share raises. The ramp is shaped by Verizon's specific yield-versus-growth profile — high cash today, slow per-share growth — and looks structurally different from the ramp a faster-growing, lower-yield Dividend King like KO or PG would produce. These scenarios assume the historical pattern of small annual increases continues. Real outcomes depend on Verizon's future capital allocation, 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.