Tech giant Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has historically been an excellent investment. Its iPhones, iPads, Macs, AirPods, and other products are immensely popular. Its ecosystem draws customers in to spend more on many of Apple's products and services, allowing the company to easily grow its revenue by introducing new offerings to its existing user base.
The company has been generous with buybacks as well, with Apple's Board recently authorizing another $90 billion in share repurchases.
But as a dividend stock, it's hard to get excited about Apple. The company released earnings last week and upon another strong performance, it announced it would be increasing its dividend for an 11th consecutive year. That sounds great but the 4% increase means that investors are collecting $0.24 per share every quarter – just one cent more than what the company was previously paying. With the increase, the dividend is still yielding a very mild 0.58%. You would need to invest more than $172,000 into the stock just to collect $1,000 in dividends over the course of a full year. By comparison, the average stock on the S&P 500 pays 1.7%.
Apple is a great investment for many reasons, but its dividend isn't one of them. If you're looking for a recurring payout to rely on, you may be better off going elsewhere as Apple's yield is incredibly modest. And increasing its dividend by one cent at a time isn't going to do much to change that anytime soon. Apple's a good stock but don't let the dividend increases fool you – the payout still leaves much to be desired.
