Verizon: 18 Years of Consecutive Dividend Hikes Pay You 6.4% Today

Verizon’s impressive subscriber growth and consistent financial performance sets it up for future growth in the competitive telecommunications market.

Strategic acquisitions and divestitures have positioned the company well going forward. And as well, the company’s commitment to shareholder returns (a streak of dividend increases and the high yield) make it an attractive option for income-seeking investors.

Meanwhile, the stock trades at just 9.1 times the company’s forward earnings forecast.

VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC. (New York symbol VZ; www.verizon.com) is the second-largest wireless carrier in the U.S. after AT&T (New York symbol T), with over 146 million subscribers (consumers and businesses). It also sells traditional telephone lines, high-speed Internet and TV services.

In January 2025, Verizon completed the sale of its 6,339 wireless communications towers across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. to Vertical Bridge REIT for $3.3 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Verizon will lease back these towers for 10 years, with an option to extend that term to up to 50 years. The company expects to complete the sale by the end of 2024. The sale frees up cash that Verizon can use to invest in its wireless and Internet networks and to fund more dividend increases.

The company is now buying Frontier Communications Parent Inc. (Nasdaq symbol FYBR) in an all-cash deal valued at $20 billion. Frontier provides high-speed Internet access through fibre-optic lines to 2.2 million subscribers across 25 states. That will help Verizon attract and retain mobile phone customers with discounted service bundles.

Verizon aims to complete the purchase in late 2025. Eliminating overlapping operations will let it cut $500 million from its annual costs by the end of the third year.

Dividend Stocks: Verizon’s subscriber numbers are growing to support the high payout

Verizon added 568,000 wireless phone subscribers under long-term contracts (net of cancellations) in the fourth quarter of 2024, up 26.5% from 449,000 a year earlier. Those new users, along with higher demand for premium subscription plans, helped lift revenue by 1.6%, to $35.68 billion from $35.13 billion a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, per-share
earnings improved 1.9%, to $1.10 from $1.08.

For 2025, Verizon expects its revenue from its main wireless division will rise between 2.0% and 2.8% as more users upgrade to faster 5G speeds.

The company also expects to spend between $17.5 billion and $18.5 billion on network improvements, up from $17.1 billion in 2024. That higher spending will help it take advantage of rising demand for data intensive artificial intelligence services.

Verizon also expects its earnings in 2025 will rise about 1.5% to $4.66 a share, and the stock trades at just 9.1 times that forecast.

With the November 2024 payment, Verizon raised your quarterly dividend by 1.9%, to $0.6775 a share from $0.655. The new annual rate of $2.71 a share yields a high 6.4%. With that increase, the company has now raised its dividend each of the past 18 years.

Recommendation in Wall Street Stock Forecaster: Verizon Communications Inc. is a buy.

Copy
Link copied
Email
Print

dividend option Verizon Communications Inc.

Jim Bates

Jim is an associate editor at TSI Network. He is the lead reporter and analyst for The Successful Investor and Wall Street Stock Forecaster and a member of the Investment Planning Committee. Jim has held the Chartered Financial Analyst designation since 1992 and spent more than a decade at the Financial Post DataGroup before joining TSI Network. He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto.

Find 5 Safe Stocks to
Buy & Hold for Long-Term
Growth and Steady Income

No Credit Card Required

SEND ME THIS FREE REPORT

Testimonials

The cornerstones of Pat’s strategy–value, diversification and timelines–make his newsletter, The Successful Investor, highly profitable while minimizing risk. His advice is no-nonsense, down-to-earth and based on solid research. You’ll know what to invest in and what to avoid.

Chuck Chakrapani, PhD
Investors Association of Canada
The older I get the better dividends look. For retirees and would-be retirees who want to sleep at night, I can’t think of a better source of information on reliable growing dividend income than Pat McKeough’s newsletter, Dividend Advisor.

Jonathan Chevreau
Financial Post Columnist
As a manager of more than $500 million in mutual funds, I have access to the best brokerage research available in this country. But I still take time to read Pat McKeough’s premium newsletters

John Sartz
I appreciate the 25 years of above market returns I received by following your advice. at least 95% of my investment decisions were based on TSI recommendations.

Chuck J.
Subscriber since 1996. Inner Circle Member Since 2006
The newsletters I receive in Inner Circle Pro are fantastic! I have been following Pat’s advice for years and everything he has said has been amazing. His commentaries are brilliant, insightful, educational, rational and balanced. My returns are almost double the TSE and I have referred many of my friends who have switched over to your services.

Walter H.
Inner Circle Pro subscriber

Free Reports

5 Best Stocks to Buy This Month

The Successful Investor Approach to AI Investing

7 Winning Strategies for Dividend Investors

The Best Blue Chips for Canadian Investors

The ETF Investor’s Handbook

The Canadian Guide on How to Invest in Stocks Successfully

Power and Profits of Energy Stocks

Juniors to Giants: The Complete Guide to Mining Stocks

How to Find the Best Growth Stocks

7 Pro Secrets to Value Investing

Browse Topics

Blue Chip Stocks

Blue chip stocks are big, well-established, dividend-paying corporations with strong business prospects. These are companies that also have sound management that should be able to make the right moves to keep competing successfully in a changing marketplace.

Dividend Stocks

Dividend stocks make cash payouts that serve as a way for companies to share the wealth they’ve accumulated. These payouts are drawn from earnings and cash flow and paid to the shareholders of the company. Typically, these dividends are paid quarterly, although they may be paid annually or even monthly as well.

Value Stocks

What are value stocks?

One of the sweetest and most profitable pleasures of successful investing is to buy high-quality “value stocks” (or stocks that are reasonably priced, if not cheap, in relation to its sales, earnings or assets), then hold on to them as mainstream investors recognize the value and push up the share price.

Growth Stocks

Growth stocks are companies that are likely to have sales and earnings growth well above market average. Frequently they pay few, if any, dividends. Instead they typically reinvest any extra cash flow to promote further growth. Chosen wisely—according to Pat McKeough’s advice—high-quality growth-oriented stocks can be worthwhile additions to most well-diversified portfolios.

ETFs

What are ETFs?

ETF is an acronym for exchange traded fund.. These exchange traded funds are used to track indexes as closely as possible, since investors cannot actually buy an index outright.

How To Invest

Pat McKeough has been making investing for beginners simple—and profitable—by helping investors make big gains for more than 25 years. His advice to beginning investors is the same as it is for all investors: buy high-quality, mostly dividend paying stocks (or ETFs that hold these stocks) and evenly spread your investments over the five main economic sectors (Resources, Manufacturing, Finance, Utilities and Consumer). Pat also believes investors should avoid stocks in the broker/media limelight and focus on those with hidden or little-noticed assets.

Wealth Management

Wealth management is the practice of putting your savings to work so that it continues to grow over your lifetime and will also benefit your heirs. Wealth management encompasses many different areas of investing like long term investment planning and retirement planning.

AI Investing

Artificial intelligence (AI) is essentially the merging of today’s big computing with big data. This has resulted in breakthroughs in everything from creating machines to recognize faces with more accuracy than a human, to the development of chatbots able to collect, organize and simplify all the Internet has to say on any topic.

Spinoffs

One of the ways a company can try to unlock its own hidden value is by creating a separate company out of a corporate subsidiary. The parent company can either sell stock in the new company to the public, or spin it off—hand the stock out to its own investors.

Penny Stocks

A penny stock in general trades for under five dollars a share, and as the name implies, sometimes for pennies. Most of the time they’re young companies, or start-ups in speculative markets like mining or technology.

Mining Stocks

Mining stocks are investments in companies that produce or explore for minerals. Some of these minerals include uranium, coal, molybdenum (which is used in steelmaking), copper, silver and gold. They are affected by fluctuating commodity prices in addition to their own business and operating risks.

Energy Stocks

What are energy stocks?

Businesses that work in the extraction, refining and delivery of energy sources such as natural gas, oil, uranium and coal, are considered energy stocks.