55
7%
That’s how much dividend payouts by U.S. companies grew in the first quarter of the year.
Dividend growth accelerated in the first quarter to a record $164.3 billion, propelled by distributions from companies such as Meta ( META ), Walt Disney & Co. ( DIS ), and T-Mobile ( TMUS ), according to a recent Janus Henderson Global Dividend Index report. And that’s not including any special or one-time payout announcements.
If you take into account events such as Costco’s ( COST ) distribution of profits from strong quarterly sales to shareholders, and Ford Motor’s ( F ) one-off 18 cents boost to shareholders in Q1, first quarter dividends grew by almost 7.9%.
Dividend Growth Drivers
While 97% of U.S. companies increased their dividend payments , or held them steady in the first quarter, according to Janus Henderson, a few companies led the charge for dividend growth.
Meta was the biggest contributor to the overall number with its first-ever dividend . The company paid out $1.1 billion per quarter, which was only a fifth of its share repurchase program, but enough to add two-thirds of a percentage point to U.S. dividend growth for the quarter.
Communications firm T-Mobile also made a first-ever dividend payment in December and followed it with another in Q1, adding to roughly half a percentage point to the quarterly growth. Walt Disney & Co. finally bounced back from its pandemic malaise with a return to dividend payments in Q1, helped by a surprise profit in its streaming division.
Novartis ( NVS ), Microsoft ( MSFT ), Costco, Apple ( AAPL ) and Novo Nodisk ( NVO ) feature among the world’s biggest dividend paying companies for the first quarter of the year.