Methodology

How we calculate, score, and filter the data you see on this site. Every figure comes from a published rule applied the same way to every security; this page and the pages linked from it describe those rules.

Research scores

Dividendly publishes three research scores for dividend-paying common shares, each from 0 to 100, and a composite of them. Each has its own methodology page with every input, scoring table, weight and rule:

Dividendly's research scores
Score	The question it answers
Dividend Safety Score	How strong are the observable financial indicators that support continued dividend payments?
Dividend Growth Score	How strong is the historical and financial evidence supporting dividend growth? Past growth does not guarantee future increases.
Dividend Value Score	How does the current valuation compare with the security's own history and with peers? It is not a judgement that a price is too high or too low.
DividendRank	The composite: 40% Safety, 30% Growth and 30% Value. The same page defines the four S.A.F.E. checks.

All of the scores follow the same principles:

They describe securities, not people. A security has the same score for every visitor. No score takes account of anyone's circumstances, holdings or objectives.
They are produced by fixed, published formulas. Each input is turned into points on a fixed table and combined with fixed weights. No person adjusts an individual security's score, and no language model produces or changes any number. When an input is found to be wrong, the input is corrected and the score recalculated by the same formula.
Different businesses are measured differently. Ordinary companies, utilities, REITs, business development companies, banks, insurers and MLPs each use measures suited to how they fund their dividends. Funds, preferred shares and other securities that are not common shares are Not Rated.
Missing data is never filled in. Every score shows a completeness figure, the share of its weight that had data. A score with less than 60% completeness, or missing a required input, is shown as Not Rated, with the reason.
Labels describe, they do not judge. Each score is shown as a number with a short descriptive label. A score is not a probability, not a forecast and not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold.
Versioned. Each score is stored with the version of the formula that produced it, and every formula change is dated and listed on the score's page.

A security has scores only while it is a current dividend payer (see Yield calculation below) and while no automated data check is holding back one of its figures.

Yield calculation

Dividend yield is the annual dividend divided by the most recent price on file. The annual dividend is forward-looking and built from declared regular dividends:

Quarterly, monthly and weekly payers — the latest declared dividend times the number of payments a year. Where a company pays small supplemental dividends between its regular ones, we use the total declared over the latest year instead.
Semi-annual payers — the latest declared payment plus the one before it, because interim and final dividends are often different sizes.
Annual payers — the latest declared payment.
No declaration on file — the regular dividends paid over the trailing twelve months, or the current payment rate for a company with less than a year of payments.

The payment frequency is read from the dates of recent payments, so a company that moves from quarterly to monthly payments is annualized at its new frequency. Every amount is adjusted for stock splits and reverse splits dated after its ex-dividend date, using our data provider's split history, so a dividend declared before a split is never set against a post-split share price. Future payments that our data provider lists without a declaration more than 90 days ahead, or with impossible dates, are projections and are never used.

A company only has a yield while it is a current payer: it must have paid a dividend in the last 12 months or have one declared and still to come, and its latest regular dividend must fall within the window set by its payment frequency. The stock page and our lists show the declaration date of the dividend a yield is based on, and any split it has been restated for. Because price is in the denominator, yield changes whenever the price changes, even if the dividend is unchanged; prices are refreshed once a day. A computed yield above 50% is treated as a data error (for example a stale price or a currency mismatch) and is not shown.

We also calculate a trailing yield: the regular dividends actually paid over the last twelve months divided by the current price. The Dividend Value Score compares the trailing yield with its own history, because it can be measured the same way at every past date.

Special dividend identification

Special, extra and one-time payments are never counted in the annual dividend or yield. Because data providers label almost every payment as regular, we identify one-offs from the payments themselves when yields are calculated:

a payment labeled "special," "extra," "supplemental," or "one-time" in source data;
a payment more than twice the company's usual level that the payments next to it do not repeat. For semi-annual and annual payers we compare it with the same payment a year earlier, so a larger final dividend is not mistaken for a special;
a special paid together with a quarterly dividend in a single payment, which counts only at the level of the company's regular quarterly dividend;
a single payment not followed by another within 395 days.

This identification applies to the annual dividend and yield. Dividend history tables on stock pages mark these payments as Special or One-off, and the yearly totals behind growth figures, the research scores and the S.A.F.E. checks exclude them. A security whose only recent payments are specials has no forward yield, no research scores, no DividendRank and no S.A.F.E. badges. A large declared payment that we cannot yet confirm as regular does not remove a company's yield: we keep using its previous regular dividend while that is recent, or the declared payment if there is no recent regular one. If a company turns a formerly special payment into a recurring one, the payment is treated as regular once the new level repeats.

Dividend growth and increase streaks

Dividend growth on stock pages and in lists is the compound annual growth rate of the total regular dividend over the last 1, 3, 5 and 10 completed calendar years, using split-adjusted amounts and excluding one-off specials. A payment that a company moved across a year end (for example from late December to early January) is counted in the year it belongs to. The consecutive-increase streak counts completed calendar years in which the total rose, back from the last completed year; it returns to zero as soon as a decrease or suspension is recorded, including in the current year. A partial first year of payments and the year a suspended dividend resumes are not compared. Streaks are limited by how far back our records go, so they can be shorter than counts published elsewhere for companies with very long histories. Past growth does not guarantee future increases.

Payout ratio and other fundamental ratios

Payout ratio, price-to-book, earnings per share, P/E and return on equity are shown on a trailing-twelve-month (TTM) basis: they cover the company's four most recent reported quarters and are labeled with the end date of the latest of those quarters, for example “TTM, 12 months to Jun 30, 2026 (Q2 FY2026)”. The payout ratio is total dividends paid over those twelve months divided by net income over the same twelve months. Price-to-book and P/E use the share price on the date shown. When a company's trailing figures cannot be matched to a reported quarter (for example, a company that reports only annually), we show its latest fiscal-year figures instead and label them with that fiscal year. Market capitalization is share price times shares outstanding, dated with the quote it comes from.

The payout ratio reported by our data provider is checked against the company's own financial statements: dividends paid against net income after preferred dividends, and the declared dividend against earnings per share. When the provider reports 0% for a company that pays dividends, or its figure conflicts with the statements, we show N/A rather than either number. Free cash flow is operating cash flow minus capital expenditure from the same statements. The share of companies whose payout ratio passes this check is published on our data quality page.

When the payout ratio exceeds 100%, it means dividends exceeded reported earnings for that period. This does not always mean a cut is imminent — real estate investment trusts, for example, are required to distribute most of their taxable income and commonly run ratios above 100% against earnings while remaining fully covered on a cash-flow basis. Context matters; the ratio is a starting point for further investigation, not a verdict. This is why the research scores measure REITs and MLPs on operating cash flow rather than earnings.

Dividend Aristocrats and Kings

Our Dividend Aristocrats list follows the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats: S&P 500 companies that have raised their dividend for at least 25 consecutive years. Dividend Kings are companies that have raised their dividend for at least 50 consecutive years, with no index-membership requirement. Both lists, and the consecutive-increase counts shown with them, are maintained by hand from public sources, such as published index membership lists and company announcements; the current lists are as of June 2026. They are not calculated from our own dividend records, which do not always reach back far enough to confirm a 25- or 50-year record. An automated check leaves out any listed company whose recorded count is below its list's threshold and flags it for review. A company that freezes or cuts its dividend leaves a list when the list is next updated by hand, not automatically.

Coverage and security classification

We cover dividend-paying securities listed in the United States and Canada: common stocks, ADRs, REITs, business development companies, closed-end funds and ETFs, including OTC listings. Listings enter coverage from our data provider's calendar of upcoming dividends. A security shows a yield, research scores, DividendRank and S.A.F.E. checks only while it is a current payer (see Yield calculation). The screener includes every covered security, including preferred shares and exchange-listed notes, and can be filtered by security type. ETFs also have their own section, with holdings and distribution data.

Every security is classified by type (common stock, ADR, preferred share, exchange-traded note or baby bond, closed-end fund, ETF, unit, warrant), by listing (major U.S. exchange, Canadian exchange, OTC), by the issuer's country and by the kind of business it must be analysed as (ordinary company, REIT, business development company, MLP, bank, insurer, utility or fund). The kind of business decides which measures the research scores use. The evidence comes from the listing exchange, the issuer's filings with the SEC (for example whether it files a 10-K or a 20-F annual report) and our data providers' records; where sources disagree, the classification records which one was used and why. Pages and lists described as U.S.-listed common stocks include only common shares listed on a major U.S. exchange whose issuer reports in U.S. dollars and is either headquartered in the U.S. or files 10-K annual reports; each issuer appears once, and a security with an open data-quality flag that makes a figure unreliable is left out until the flag clears.

Data refresh cadence

Daily (early morning UTC, before the U.S. market opens): latest prices, daily price change and market capitalization; the previous session's daily price bar for every covered security; upcoming ex-dividend dates and newly declared dividends from our data provider's dividend calendar. The valuation history behind the Dividend Value Score (month-end prices and trailing yields over up to 10 years, with the price multiples at each fiscal year-end) is then rebuilt from our stored data, and yields, dividend growth and streaks, the Dividend Safety, Growth and Value Scores, DividendRank, S.A.F.E. checks, RSI, the payout-ratio check and our automated data-quality checks are recalculated, and a dated snapshot of the results is kept.
Weekly (Sundays): financial statements (annual and quarterly income statements, balance sheets and cash-flow statements) and fund details; a full re-pull of every covered security's dividend history, stock-split history, daily price history, trailing-twelve-month fundamental ratios (payout ratio, P/B, EPS, P/E, return on equity) and ETF holdings, plus a price and dividend cross-check against a second provider; and the classification of every security (see Coverage and security classification).
Monthly: company and fund descriptions; the addition of newly dividend-paying listings to our coverage; and the valuation history is topped up with the month-end price of the month just ended.
Hourly: dividend news headlines.

Articles are generated automatically from dividend events (increases, cuts and newly initiated dividends) and from refreshed ranked lists. The Dividend Aristocrats and Kings lists are updated by hand, as described above.

Known limitations

Funds and preferred shares are not scored. ETFs, closed-end funds, fund and trust units, preferred shares, exchange-traded notes and other securities that are not common shares are Not Rated and have no DividendRank. Fund scores are not yet available.
Some industry measures are not in our data, so stand-ins are used and named. REITs are measured on operating cash flow instead of funds from operations (FFO or AFFO); MLPs on operating cash flow instead of distributable cash flow; business development companies on reported net income, which includes investment gains and losses, instead of net investment income; banks on equity as a share of total assets instead of regulatory capital ratios. Credit ratings are not used.
The scoring tables and weights are fixed judgments, and validation is pending. They were set in advance by Dividendly and have not been fitted to past outcomes. A point-in-time test of the Safety Score against later dividend cuts is in progress; results will be published when complete.
Most financial data comes from one provider. Statements are checked for internal consistency and partly cross-checked against a second provider, but an error at the source can reach a figure or score until it is caught. Statements refresh weekly, so a new quarterly report can take about a week to appear.
OTC listings and ADRs are scored with the same formulas as other common shares of their profile. Their statements are often in another currency and published less often, so their inputs tend to be older or less complete; completeness shows this.
The Dividend Aristocrats and Kings lists are curated by hand and are not updated automatically when a company cuts or freezes its dividend.
Records have limits. Streaks, growth rates and the dividend record reach back only as far as our data provider's history, which may not reach a company's first dividend. Cuts, suspensions and the Flawless check do not evaluate years before 1990.

Reporting an error

If a figure on the site looks wrong, please tell us through the error-report form. We check reports against primary sources such as company announcements and filings, correct confirmed errors at the source data, and record corrections on our data quality page. See also our data sources and editorial policy.

Research only. Dividendly's scores describe securities, not people: they are produced by the published formulas on these pages and are the same for every visitor. They are not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security. Data may be delayed, incomplete or wrong; see our disclaimers.