To find companies with big dividend payouts in dollar terms and attractive yields, Barron’s started with the most recent Janus Henderson Quarterly Dividend Index, which analyzes global dividend activity four times a year and includes a list of the top global dividend payers each quarter. It found that Apple is among the top payers of dividends in total dollars, but its yield is a mere 0.6%.

Lawrence C. Strauss for Barron’s:

Sometimes a stock can have a big payout in terms of absolute dollars and a high dividend yield.

To find companies with big payouts in dollar terms and attractive yields, Barron’s started with the most recent Janus Henderson Quarterly Dividend Index, which analyzes global dividend activity four times a year and includes a list of the top global dividend payers each quarter.

A big dividend distribution in absolute dollars doesn’t necessarily come with a big yield.

Consider Microsoft and Apple, which recently yielded 0.9% and 0.6%, respectively. But these companies ranked first ($4.6 billion) and third ($3.6 billion) in actual dollars spent on dividends — testament to their strong cash-flow engines.

This column argued recently that Apple could easily pay a lot more in dividends and boost its yield from under 1% and its payout ratio — the percentage of earnings paid out in dividends.

MacDailyNews Take: Clearly, Apple prioritizes buybacks over dividends by a large margin.

On April 28th, Apple announced that the company’s board of directors had declared a cash dividend of $0.23 per share of the company’s common stock, an increase of 5 percent alongside authorizing an increase of $90 billion to the existing share repurchase program. As of the beginning of this year, Apple has invested more than $467 billion on share repurchases over the past decade.

Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!

Shop The Apple Store at Amazon.