Dividend stocks

Utility dividend stocks

Regulated electric, gas and water utilities — the cohort whose dividends are underwritten by a rate base rather than by a product cycle.

Securities in this list 34

Median forward yield est. 3.42% Last regular payment annualised ÷ price. Middle of the list, not an average

Median trailing 12m yield 3.35% Cash actually paid over the last 365 days ÷ price

Most rising years in our history 50 yrs Longest run of rising years inside the payment history we store, which starts later than some issuers' own records

Next ex-dividend date Aug 28 Earliest ex-date strictly after today

Which securities this list covers

Every figure on this page covers US-listed common stocks and REITs only. Preferred series and exchange-traded baby bonds are excluded by the database query itself, not filtered out by hand: both pay a contractual coupon on a fixed face amount rather than a dividend a board can raise, and they are covered on the preferred stocks and bonds pages instead. Fund wrappers — ETFs, closed-end funds and covered-call funds — and pass-through structures such as BDCs and MLPs are outside this set too, because a fund distribution is the sum of what its holdings paid minus fees, which is not the same measurement as a company dividend. Counts, medians, averages and sector aggregates below are computed across that equity set and nothing else.

Regulated utilities occupy a specific place in income investing because their revenues are set by a process rather than by a market. A state commission approves the rates a utility may charge, calculated to let it recover its operating costs and earn an approved return on the capital it has invested — its rate base. That mechanism is why utility earnings, and therefore utility dividends, have historically been steadier than those of companies selling into competitive markets.

It also caps them. The same process that guarantees a return prevents an outsized one, so utilities grow earnings roughly as fast as they grow the rate base — by building and being allowed to charge for infrastructure. Payout ratios in the sector are usually high by market standards because the business does not need to retain much for growth beyond what it can fund with debt and equity issuance, which is normal here and would be a warning elsewhere.

The dominant risk is not competition, it is interest rates and regulation. Utilities carry heavy debt to fund their assets, so rising rates raise their financing costs and, at the same time, make their yields less compelling against risk-free alternatives — which is why the sector often falls when bond yields rise. And a single unfavourable rate case, or a disallowed cost after a wildfire or a storm, can change the earnings picture faster than anything on the operating side.

Water and gas distribution utilities behave slightly differently from electric ones, with different capital cycles and different regulatory exposures, so 'utilities' is less homogeneous than the sector label suggests. The sector table on the section hub shows how the median yield here compares with the rest of the market.

Forward yield and trailing yield are two different numbers

Two different yields appear in these tables and they are not interchangeable, which is why neither is ever headed simply 'Yield' and why both columns spell their basis out in the header rather than in a note. Yield (forward est.) is a forward estimate: the most recent regular payment multiplied by the number of payments a year, divided by the latest price. It describes what the next twelve months would pay if the payment and the price both stood still, and neither of those is promised. Yield (trailing 12m) looks backwards: the cash actually paid out over the last 365 days, divided by the same price. Where a security's cadence is irregular, or its last payment is too old for the stream to look live, the forward column falls back to the trailing figure — that is why the two columns are sometimes identical. A gap between them is information rather than an error: it usually means the payment was raised or cut during the year, or that a special distribution sits inside the trailing number. Neither column is comparable to a Treasury yield, a bond's yield to maturity, a credit index effective yield or a bank deposit APY without first adjusting for what each of those measures.

The list

Every security in our database matching this list's filter. Click a ticker for its full payment history.

Open in the screener →

Our payment history for a security begins wherever the data provider's history begins — often the early 1970s — so a rising-year figure in this table counts only the years we can see: an issuer may have raised its dividend for decades before our first stored payment, which means the numbers here are frequently shorter than the record the company itself reports, and the issuer's own investor-relations page is the authority on that record.

The table below lists 34 of the 34 securities matching this filter. Ranked on the forward yield estimate. Utility payments are unusually regular, so the forward and trailing columns are normally close together here; a wide gap is worth investigating on the security's own page. Each row shows the structure of the security, its sector, the latest stored price and market capitalisation, both yield bases, the forward dividend per share, the payment schedule, the number of rising years visible in our own payment history and the next ex-dividend date after today. It is a research screen, not a recommendation.

Utility dividend stocks — computed from stored prices and individual dividend payments. Yield (forward est.) annualises the last regular payment; Yield (trailing 12m) is the cash paid over the last 365 days. Both are divided by the latest stored price. The rising-years column counts only the years inside our own payment history.
Ticker	Name	Type	Sector	Price	Market cap	Yield (forward est.)Latest payment, annualised, over today's price.	Yield (trailing 12m)	Forward div / share / yrWhat a share is on track to pay over a year.	Pays	Rising yrs (our history)	Next ex-date (after today)
AVA	Avista Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$37.75	$3.16B	5.22%	5.21%	$1.97	Quarterly	23	—
ES	Eversource Energy	Common stock	Utilities	$71.03	$26.71B	4.43%	4.34%	$3.15	Quarterly	25	—
POR	Portland General Electric Company	Common stock	Utilities	$49.81	$5.76B	4.43%	4.27%	$2.21	Quarterly	19+ †	Sep 25, 2026
FE	FirstEnergy Corp.	Common stock	Utilities	$46.59	$26.96B	3.99%	3.91%	$1.86	Quarterly	3	—
D	Dominion Energy, Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$66.93	$58.87B	3.99%	3.99%	$2.67	Quarterly	0	Sep 04, 2026
SR	Spire Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$83.21	$4.92B	3.97%	3.92%	$3.30	Quarterly	22	Sep 11, 2026
UGI	UGI Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$38.35	$8.22B	3.91%	3.91%	$1.50	Quarterly	0	Sep 15, 2026
BKH	Black Hills Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$73.02	$5.56B	3.85%	3.81%	$2.81	Quarterly	2	—
EXC	Exelon Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$44.31	$45.65B	3.79%	2.80%	$1.68	Quarterly	4	Sep 04, 2026
NWE	Northwestern Energy Group Inc	Common stock	Utilities	$70.88	$4.36B	3.78%	4.70%	$2.68	Quarterly	17+ †	—
PNW	Pinnacle West Capital Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$97.68	$11.84B	3.73%	3.73%	$3.64	Quarterly	14	—
OGE	OGE Energy Corp.	Common stock	Utilities	$45.94	$9.49B	3.70%	3.70%	$1.70	Quarterly	19	—
PEG	Public Service Enterprise Group Incorporated	Common stock	Utilities	$73.28	$36.52B	3.66%	3.55%	$2.68	Quarterly	14	Sep 09, 2026
WEC	WEC Energy Group, Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$106.67	$34.75B	3.57%	3.52%	$3.81	Quarterly	22	—
DUK	Duke Energy Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$121.59	$94.79B	3.57%	3.52%	$4.34	Quarterly	19	—
NJR	New Jersey Resources Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$53.81	$5.43B	3.53%	3.53%	$1.90	Quarterly	23	—
DTE	DTE Energy Company	Common stock	Utilities	$136.14	$28.33B	3.42%	3.37%	$4.66	Quarterly	4	Sep 21, 2026
EVRG	Evergy, Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$81.41	$18.77B	3.41%	3.41%	$2.78	Quarterly	20	—
SO	The Southern Company	Common stock	Utilities	$89.97	$103.50B	3.38%	3.33%	$3.04	Quarterly	25	—
CMS	CMS Energy Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$68.74	$21.56B	3.32%	3.28%	$2.28	Quarterly	14	—
ED	Consolidated Edison, Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$107.09	$39.47B	3.31%	3.28%	$3.55	Quarterly	50	—
PPL	PPL Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$34.99	$26.33B	3.26%	3.19%	$1.14	Quarterly	3	Sep 10, 2026
LNT	Alliant Energy Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$68.34	$17.65B	3.13%	3.09%	$2.14	Quarterly	12	—
SRE	Sempra	Common stock	Utilities	$84.02	$54.92B	3.13%	3.10%	$2.63	Quarterly	15	—
AEP	American Electric Power Company, Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$122.77	$66.84B	3.10%	3.10%	$3.80	Quarterly	13	—
XEL	Xcel Energy Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$77.19	$48.22B	3.07%	3.01%	$2.37	Quarterly	22	Sep 15, 2026
NEE	NextEra Energy, Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$84.22	$175.68B	2.96%	2.83%	$2.49	Quarterly	30	Aug 28, 2026
NI	NiSource Inc	Common stock	Utilities	$40.65	$19.49B	2.95%	2.90%	$1.20	Quarterly	12	Oct 30, 2026
SWX	Southwest Gas Holdings, Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$89.08	$6.45B	2.90%	2.84%	$2.58	Quarterly	0	—
AEE	Ameren Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$106.83	$29.57B	2.81%	2.73%	$3.00	Quarterly	12	Sep 08, 2026
MDU	MDU Resources Group, Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$19.98	$4.18B	2.80%	2.80%	$0.56	Quarterly	35	Sep 10, 2026
IDA	IDACORP, Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$137.66	$7.96B	2.56%	2.56%	$3.52	Quarterly	14	—
CNP	CenterPoint Energy, Inc.	Common stock	Utilities	$38.93	$25.64B	2.47%	2.36%	$0.96	Quarterly	4	—
ATO	Atmos Energy Corporation	Common stock	Utilities	$167.56	$27.97B	2.39%	2.91%	$4.00	Quarterly	38	—

† A figure marked with a dagger is a floor, not a total. The rising run reaches the first year of payment history we hold for that security, so the count stops where our data stops rather than where the company's record does — the real record is longer by an amount we cannot see from here. Check the issuer's investor-relations page, which publishes its own dividend history, before quoting any of these numbers as a company record.

Showing 34 of 34 matching securities. Adjust this filter in the screener →

Data as of Aug 25, 2026.

Prices and market capitalisations last refreshed Aug 25, 2026; the yields, streaks and next ex-dates beside them were derived Aug 25, 2026. Nothing here is a live quote.

Where utility income breaks

Regulated returns are not guaranteed returns. Rate cases can go against a utility, storm and wildfire liabilities can be disallowed, and a heavily indebted balance sheet leaves less room to absorb either.

How dividend income goes wrong

A dividend is a decision, not a contract. Boards can cut or suspend a payment at any meeting, and they usually do it at the worst moment — when earnings, the balance sheet and the share price are already under pressure, so the income and the capital fall together. A yield far above its peer group is normally the market pricing in that cut rather than an oversight: the yield is high because the price has already fallen. Dividends can also shrink in real terms if they grow more slowly than inflation, and a single-stock income stream concentrates company risk, sector risk and, for foreign payers, currency and withholding risk. Past payments are a record, not a promise.

About the research score

The research score is a screen, not a recommendation and not a credit rating. It blends the current yield, how much of reported earnings the payment consumes, the length of the rising-payment run visible in our stored history and how many years of payments we hold for the security at all — both of the last two are bounded by how far back our payment data goes, so a company with a long record but a short file scores lower than one with the same record and deeper data. A high score means a security matched those four mechanical tests on the day the numbers were computed. It says nothing about what the shares will do next, and it does not know about a lawsuit, a refinancing or a lost contract. Full definitions are on the methodology page.

How this list is built

This page is a single filter applied to the same database that drives every other table on the site: a security qualifies or it does not, and the order is set by the column named in the section heading. Nothing is hand-picked, promoted or paid for, and no position on the page implies anything about the merits of the security in it.

Yields, payment schedules, rising-year counts and payout ratios are all computed from the quotes and individual payments we store, so any figure here can be checked against the payment list on the security's own page. That also sets the limit on the rising-year column: it counts within the payments we hold and stops where they start, so for a long-established payer it is a floor and the issuer's own investor-relations page is the authority on the company's record. Where we hold no data — a missing payout ratio, an unknown next ex-date — the cell is blank rather than filled with an estimate. The next ex-date column shows only dates strictly after today, because a security going ex today is already trading without that payment. The methodology page sets out every definition in full.

Where each number on this page comes from. Price, market capitalisation and the security's name, sector and industry: Financial Modeling Prep, quote and company-screener endpoints, stored daily by pipeline/quotes.py and weekly by pipeline/universe.py. Individual dividend payments — amount, ex-date, record date, pay date and whether the payment was regular or special: Financial Modeling Prep, dividends endpoint, stored by pipeline/dividends_fmp.py. Payout ratio: Financial Modeling Prep, ratios-ttm endpoint, stored by pipeline/fundamentals.py and measured against GAAP earnings per share. Everything else — the forward yield estimate, the trailing twelve-month yield, the payment cadence, the count of rising years and the first year of history it could be counted from, the five-year growth rate, the next ex-date and the research score — is computed on this server by pipeline/compute.py from those stored payments and prices. No vendor's own yield field is printed anywhere in this section, which is why every figure here can be traced back to a list of individual payments on the security's own page.

Other cuts of the same data

Back to dividend stocks →

Highest yield

Ranked by the forward yield estimate, with the reason the top of the list needs the most scrutiny.

Common stocks and REITs Read →

10+ rising years

Ten or more consecutive rising years inside the payment history we hold.

Common stocks and REITs · our history only Read →

25+ rising years

A quarter-century of increases in our data — why this is neither an Aristocrats list nor the company's own record.

Common stocks and REITs · our history only Read →

50+ rising years

The longest runs our payment history can show. Usually a short page.

Common stocks and REITs · our history only Read → Wider universe

Monthly payers

Twelve payments a year, mostly REITs, BDCs and funds.

Mixed structures Read →

REITs

Property income, and why the payout column misleads for it.

REITs Read → Different universe

Dividend ETFs

One decision instead of fifty — but the index rules decide what you own.

Funds, not company shares Read →

Common questions

What is the difference between the forward yield and the trailing 12-month yield in your tables?

They measure different things, so they appear in separate columns, each header names its own basis, and the two are never totalled or averaged together. The forward estimate — headed 'Yield (forward est.)' — is the most recent regular payment multiplied by the number of payments per year, divided by the latest price. It is an estimate of the next twelve months on the assumption that nothing changes. The trailing figure — headed 'Yield (trailing 12m)' — is the cash actually paid over the last 365 days divided by the same price, so it is a record rather than an estimate. Special dividends are excluded from the forward estimate because they are by definition not repeated, but they are inside the trailing number, which is one reason the two can differ. Where a payment cadence cannot be established, or the last payment is too old for the stream to look live, the forward column falls back to the trailing figure and the two columns show the same number.

Which securities are included in the figures on this page?

US-listed common stocks and REITs, and nothing else. Preferred series and exchange-traded baby bonds are excluded by the query: they pay a contractual coupon on a fixed face amount, which is a different instrument from a dividend a board votes on each quarter, and they are covered under preferred stocks and bonds. ETFs, closed-end funds, covered-call funds, BDCs and MLPs are also outside the set used for counts, medians, sector aggregates and the screener. Two curated lists — monthly payers and dividend ETFs — deliberately describe a wider universe, and each states at the top exactly which structures it contains.

Does 'upcoming ex-dividend date' include today?

No. On the ex-dividend date the shares already trade without the right to the payment, so a security going ex today is not an upcoming opportunity to receive that dividend — buying it this morning means the seller keeps the money. On the dividend stocks hub, securities going ex today are separated into their own labelled group rather than left inside the upcoming table, and every 'next ex-dividend date' figure on this site counts only dates strictly after today.

What does a very high yield usually mean?

Usually that the price has already fallen because the market expects the payment to be cut. Yield is a fraction: when the numerator is unchanged and the denominator collapses, the yield rises. A double-digit yield in a sector where everyone else pays 3% is a question to investigate, not a bargain to assume. It can also be an artefact — a fund distributing return of capital, a partnership passing through a one-off, or a stale price in our data.

Why is your rising-year figure shorter than the record the company reports?

Because the two count over different windows. Our figure counts consecutive rising calendar years inside the payment history stored in this database, and that history begins where our data provider's history begins — frequently the early 1970s. A company that has raised its dividend since the 1950s or 1960s was raising it long before our first stored payment, and we cannot see those years, so the number in our column stops at the edge of our file rather than at the start of the run. Where that happens the table prints the figure with a trailing plus and a dagger to mark it as a floor. It is not a correction of the company's number and it is not a competing count: the issuer's investor-relations page is the authority on its own record, and the figure here is only the part of that record we hold the payments for.