last updated March 19, 2014

When you buy a share of a company, you become an owner of that company. You are entitled to share the profit the company makes every yearyou shared in the risk, and you share in the reward.

What is a Dividend?

Some companies pay dividends. A dividend is a portion of the profit the company makes paid to each shareholder. For example, if Acme Lemonade Stands makes a million dollars in profit and has a million shares, the company could pay a dollar per share as a dividend.

What Good is a Dividend?

A dividend is a portion of the profit of the company. The directors of the company look at the financial health of the company and decide whether it’s better to pay some of the profit of the company to the shareholders or to do something else with the money.

If you’re a shareholder, a dividend is nice because it’s money paid simply for owning the stock. Think of it like the interest you earn on a money market account or a CD. A really good company with a reliable dividend can earn you money every three months just for owning a share of stock. (How often do companies pay dividends? It varies by company, but a good company with a regular dividend will pay it quarterly, announcing the dividend near the time it announces its quarterly financial results.)

If you’re a director of the company, a dividend can be nice because it demonstrates an attractive stability. Many investors like reliable dividends because they can count on that money every quarter. They know that every share of Acme Lemonade Stands will pay them a dollar in dividends every year, as long as the business keeps its current profitability. This is money you earn from stocks without even selling them; remember to calculate this in your rate of return.

Of course, even better companies increase the dividend rate regularly. That’s a sign of true long term success. Keep in mind that companies that raise their dividend rates are well-established companies, like Dow stalwarts GE and Coca-Cola. They’re unlikely to experience the booming growth of smaller companies because their valuations are so high already, but they’re expected to continue to make lots of money every year and return it to shareholders. And they do.

(If your portfolio contains mutual funds or index funds, they’re receiving the dividends and calculating the increase for you. Many fund companies like Vanguard have high dividend yield index funds available.)

Why do companies pay dividends? Because profits belong to the owners of the companythe shareholders and the company doesn’t see any better opportunities to invest the money.

What are the Alternatives to Paying a Dividend?

Do all stocks pay dividends? No !Not all companies pay dividends. Companies that do not pay dividends may not be profitable, so they can’t pay dividends. Other companies earn very small profits or need the working capital for liquidity purposes, so it doesn’t make sense to pay dividends.

There are only a few alternatives to paying a dividend.

A company might choose to hoard its profit. This is especially true for businesses with cyclical sales and profits. For example, an airplane manufacturer might spend a lot of money one year building or upgrading a factory. It might lose money that year. In a couple of years, when the factory is making lots of planes and selling lots of planes, profits might go up, and so the company will prefer to save that money to buy the next factory.

Similarly, a company that plans to grow much larger might reinvest its profits back into the company so that it’s worth more in the near future. You often see this in technology stocks, where acquiring more customers or increasing the value of each customer will hopefully produce even more revenue in the futureand more profits.

A company might also acquire other companies. This is similar to investing in the company. You can see this happen in very large companies, where it’s cheaper and easier to buy an established but smaller company than it is to start a new line of business.

Finally, a company might buy back shares of its stock and retire them, so that every remaining share owns a larger piece of the company and thus becomes more valuable. This strategy makes a lot of sense when the price of the company’s stock is artificially low.

In one sense, these strategies have one thing in common: they’re all intended to make the company itself intrinsically more valuable, whether by expanding the customer base and product offering, by providing opportunities to enter new markets or capture more of an existing market, or by increasing demand and thus raising the price of the stock itself.

A company which can do this is worth more than gold; a company with a solid business that grows and generates more cash every year is a great company to own. Instead of financing its growth (or operations) through debt, it’s free to build up its own equity.

Why Do Some Companies Not Pay Dividends?

A company may not pay a dividend if its directors believe that it’s better to put the business’s profits to work making the business itself more valuable. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is a famous example of this; the company has grown through acquiring other good businesses, mostly in the US and Canada, many of which themselves pay dividends. If Buffet and his partner Charlie Munger ever felt that the best use of the company’s profits were to return it to shareholders, Berkshire Hathaway would pay a dividend.

An established business with a dominance in the market and few opportunities to grow doesn’t always have this luxury. In that case, the value of the stock depends on being able to pay a good and steady dividend. In other cases, the value of the stock depends on the company growing larger and making steadily more money. These growth stocks often do not pay dividends.

Beware of one case: some companies facing difficult times might raise their dividend payouts to appear more attractive. Always check to see what the real cash flow situation is before you chase down the highest dividends.

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