Dividends paid
Dividends paid is the total cash a company handed to its shareholders as dividends during the year — the whole amount, not the amount per share.
How it is computed here
| Formula | as reported in the financing section of the cash flow statement |
|---|---|
| Unit | Currency amount |
| Period | One fiscal year, as reported |
| Source | Extracted from SEC filings; every value on an asset page carries the accounting tag and the filing it came from |
| Identifier | dividendos_pagos |
What goes into the formula
| Cash dividends paid on common stock | Money that actually left the company during the fiscal year. The XBRL records cash leaving as a positive number in the financing section; here it becomes the magnitude of what was handed over. |
|---|---|
| Timing, which is not the same as declaration | A dividend declared in December and paid in January appears in the following year's cash flow. That is why this figure and dividend per share, which follows the declaration, do not always multiply out exactly. |
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.
How to calculate dividends paid, step by step
A company with a billion shares and a quarterly dividend.
| Dividend per share, for the year | $1.20 |
|---|---|
| Shares outstanding | 1.00B |
| Dividends paid, as reported | $1,180M |
| Net buybacks | $3,400M |
- Rough check: 1.20 × 1,000 = $1,200M.
- Reported: $1,180M — the $20M gap is timing, not an error.
- Total returned to shareholders = 1,180 + 3,400 = $4,580M.
- The dividend was 26% of what shareholders received.
Result: $1,180M of cash dividends, a quarter of the total returned
This is the figure that competes with capital expenditure and debt repayment for the same cash. Per-share figures hide that competition; the total does not.
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.
What dividends paid is good for
Dividend per share tells an owner what they received; this tells you what the company could afford. Set against free cash flow it answers the only question that matters for a dividend's survival — was it paid out of the business or out of the balance sheet.
What this number does not tell you
The total moves when the share count moves, so a company can pay more in total while paying less per share, and a heavy buyback programme quietly reduces the total bill without any shareholder receiving less. It also covers common stock only, so a company with large preferred dividends returns less to its ordinary owners than this line suggests.
Every metric on this site is published with its blind spot stated. A figure without its limit is half a fact.
Highest reported dividends paid
| MSFTMICROSOFT CORPORATION | $26.4B |
|---|---|
| XOMEXXON MOBIL CORP | $17.2B |
| JPMJPMORGAN CHASE & CO | $16.6B |
| AAPLApple Inc. | $15.4B |
| CVXChevron Corp | $12.8B |
| ABBVAbbVie Inc. | $11.7B |
| VZVERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC | $11.5B |
| AVGOBroadcom Inc. | $11.1B |
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.
See it in a published filing
These pages show the figure across up to nineteen fiscal years, with the accounting tag and the filing behind every value.