How much will Realty Income pay in dividends this year?

Real estate income (O 0.97%) is one of the best dividend stocks you can buy. The real estate investment trust (REIT) has a long track record of paying and increasing its dividends, which are reliable and high-yielding. Let’s see how much the company will pay out in dividends this year.

Monthly payments add up

While Realty Income is one of the top real estate investment trusts, it stands out from other major dividend payers because it is one of the few stocks that pays monthly dividends. It has paid a dividend for 650 consecutive months and has increased it 107 consecutive times per quarter. At the current price, the dividend yield is 5.1%, which is nearly four times the average. S&P 500 yield.

As a REIT, Realty Income is structured in a specific way that requires that at least 90% of its income be paid out as dividends. For any other company, dividend payments are at the discretion of management, although a traditional dividend stock, such as Coca-Colatends to keep the distribution rate quite high, around 75%.

A REIT is more complex than a standard stock, and its profitability is more commonly measured by funds from operations (FFO), and even more often by the adjusted version, than by net income. You’ll often see a REIT’s payout ratio well over 90% because it uses FFO as its earnings benchmark, and FFO represents more cash transactions. Over the past 12 months, Realty Income’s payout ratio was 287%, and the company paid out $2.4 billion in dividends.

Realty Income currently pays a monthly dividend of $0.26 per share, or $3.16 per year, but that’s already quadrupled in 2024. It paid $2.1 billion in total dividends in 2023, or $30 million more than the year before. There’s no guarantee that will happen, but it’s reasonable to expect further increases by the end of the year.