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MARKETS / GLOSSARY / DIVIDEND PER SHARE

Dividend per share

Dividend per share is the cash paid to the holder of one share over the fiscal year, in the currency the company reports in.

Definition

How it is computed here

Formuladividends declared ÷ shares outstanding
UnitCurrency per share
PeriodOne fiscal year, as reported
SourceExtracted from SEC filings; every value on an asset page carries the accounting tag and the filing it came from
Identifierdividendo_por_acao
The inputs

What goes into the formula

Dividends declared on common stockThe amount declared for the fiscal year. Where a company reports the per-share figure directly — most do — that figure is used rather than the division.
Shares outstandingThe count the payment was spread across.

A formula without its inputs explained is decoration. Where an input is missing from a filing, the metric is left empty here rather than completed with a zero or an estimate.

Worked example

How to calculate dividend per share, step by step

A company paying a quarterly dividend that rose once during the year.

Q1 and Q2$0.28 each
Q3 and Q4, after a raise$0.32 each
Earnings per share$2.26
  1. Dividend per share = 0.28 + 0.28 + 0.32 + 0.32 = $1.20.
  2. Dividend coverage = 2.26 ÷ 1.20 = 1.9 times.
  3. Payout ratio = 1.20 ÷ 2.26 = 53.1%.

Result: $1.20 per share for the year

An owner of a thousand shares received $1,200 in cash. Just over half the year's earnings went out of the door; the rest stayed in the company.

The figures in this example are illustrative and rounded — they are not a real company. The real figures on this site are the live ones below and on every asset page, each carrying the filing it came from.

Why it matters

What dividend per share is good for

For an income investor this is the figure that actually arrives in the account. Tracked across years it is also the most direct record of what management believes about the future: a board raises a dividend it expects to keep paying.

The limit

What this number does not tell you

This is not dividend yield. Yield is the dividend divided by the share price, and there is no price on this site — so a dividend per share of $5 tells you nothing about the return until you know what the share costs. It is also a per-share figure, so a stock split halves or quarters it overnight without a cent less being paid out in total.

Every metric on this site is published with its blind spot stated. A figure without its limit is half a fact.

In the data

Highest reported dividend per share

From the most recent fiscal year of each company. Only companies reporting in US dollars are ranked here — a figure in yen or won is not larger, it is in another currency.

On a real company

See it in a published filing

Their sectors

These pages show the figure across up to nineteen fiscal years, with the accounting tag and the filing behind every value.

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