Payout ratio
The payout ratio is the share of profit handed to shareholders as a dividend rather than kept and reinvested.
How it is computed here
| Formula | dividends paid ÷ net income |
|---|---|
| Unit | Ratio (shown as %) |
| 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 | payout |
What goes into the formula
| Dividends paid | Cash actually paid out during the year, taken from the cash flow statement. The XBRL records cash leaving as a positive number in the financing section; here it becomes the magnitude of what was handed over. |
|---|---|
| Net income | The year's bottom line. When it is negative the ratio has no reading — a company can pay a dividend in a loss year, but it did not pay it out of that year's profit. |
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 payout ratio, step by step
A mature company with heavy depreciation.
| Dividends paid | $1,200M |
|---|---|
| Net income | $1,000M |
| Free cash flow | $1,900M |
- Payout ratio = 1,200 ÷ 1,000 = 1.20 = 120%.
- The company paid out more than it earned.
- But against cash: 1,200 ÷ 1,900 = 63% of free cash flow.
Result: 120% of profit, 63% of free cash flow
Two honest numbers, opposite conclusions. The profit-based ratio looks alarming and the cash-based one looks comfortable, and the difference is entirely depreciation on assets bought long ago.
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 payout ratio is good for
The payout ratio is the fastest read on how much room a dividend has. A low ratio leaves space to raise it and to absorb a bad year; a ratio near or above 100% means the next disappointment has to come out of somewhere other than the year's profit.
What this number does not tell you
Paying above 100% is not automatically unsustainable — a company with heavy depreciation can generate far more cash than accounting profit, and this site shows both. Read it next to dividend coverage and free cash flow, never alone. The ratio also ignores buybacks entirely, so a company returning most of its profit through repurchases shows a low payout ratio and is not retaining anything. For most of this site the ratio does not exist at all. Of 6,088 companies, 3,602 have never reported a dividend in any year on file, and 1,835 paid one in their most recent year. A further 563 have a dividend history but no entry for that particular year — a different fact from never having paid, and shown differently here. An absent payout ratio usually means there was no dividend, not that the figure went missing.
Every metric on this site is published with its blind spot stated. A figure without its limit is half a fact.
Highest reported payout ratio
| BMHLBluemount Holdings Ltd | 495736.7% |
|---|---|
| BPBP PLC | 9198.2% |
| HRIHERC HOLDINGS INC | 8700.0% |
| NTICNORTHERN TECHNOLOGIES INTERNATIONAL CO | 8600.7% |
| FSKFS KKR Capital Corp | 7127.3% |
| UTZUtz Brands, Inc. | 2787.5% |
| NFBKNorthfield Bancorp, Inc. | 2657.3% |
| AMBPArdagh Metal Packaging S.A. | 2381.8% |
From the most recent fiscal year of each company.
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.