Dividends are great, particularly if you need investment income to cover life's ordinary expenses. Let's face it, though: The typical quarterly cadence of most dividend stocks' payments isn't exactly ideal. Monthly payouts would be much more convenient.
Well, there are some stocks making a dividend payment every month rather than every quarter. Here's a closer look at three of them that income-minded investors might want to consider adding to their portfolio.
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1. Realty Income
You may not have heard of Realty Income(NYSE: O), but there's a good chance you've stepped foot on to at least one of its properties. See, Realty Income is a real estate investment trust -- or REIT -- serving as landlord to many familiar retailers including Walmart, 7-Eleven, Life Time Fitness, and Dollar Tree, just to name a few. All told, the company owns 15,627 different sites, 98.5% of which are currently leased to nearly 1,600 different customers, no single one of which accounts for more than 4% of its revenue.
It's a business that's well-suited for supporting monthly dividend payments. After all, Realty Income collects rent payments on a monthly basis, while its own mortgage payments and operating expenses are also paid by the month; shareholders just pocket the bulk of the difference. And, being structured as a real estate investment trust, most of this income isn't taxed before being passed along to investors.
But isn't the brick-and-mortar retail industry dying? Not quite. It would be more accurate to say it's being refined, separating the resilient names from the weaker ones. For instance, while Coresight Research reports 7,325 total U.S. retail stores were shuttered last year, 5,970 were opened by outfits with a better shot at surviving the so-called retail apocalypse.
It's worth adding that the bulk of Realty Income's tenants are among the strongest retailers with real staying power. Underscoring this claim is the fact that this REIT has not only paid a monthly dividend like clockwork for the past 55 years, but has raised its total annual payment every year for the past 27 years.
Newcomers will be plugging into this dividend stock while its forward-looking yield stands at 5.8%.
2. Stag Industrial
Stag Industrial's (NYSE: STAG) forward-looking dividend yield of 4.2% clearly isn't quite as strong as Realty Income's. Still, it's a monthly dividend payer worth a look.
Like Realty Income, Stag is a REIT. It's got a measurably different focus, though. Whereas Realty Income's specialty is retail properties, Stag Industrial's core business is (just as the name suggests) buying, developing, and renting out industrial properties like warehouses and distribution centers. It owns 597 different buildings covering 117.6 million square feet, which generates on the order of $200 million in revenue every quarter.
As is the case with ownership of any rental real estate, there's risk here. Namely, ever-rising costs and economic headwinds could make it tough to continue doing profitable business.
A great deal of this risk is curbed, however, by Stag's typical rental agreement with its tenants.
See, Stag Industrial's leases are usually so-called triple net leases, where the renter rather than the landlord is responsible for expenses like utilities, taxes, insurance, and maintenance. While this obviously still leaves Stag on the hook for what are essentially mortgage payments, these payments are fixed and don't rise over time. Rental rates do.
That being said, Stag Industrial's current operating occupancy rate of 96.8% indicates that -- like Realty Income -- its renters are among the marketplace's fiscally strongest players, and doing just fine despite the shaky economic backdrop.
Stag Industrial doesn't boast the same sort of dividend pedigree that Realty Income does. Stag Industrial has only upped its annualized dividend payout in each of the past 14 years, in fact, and not by much in most of those years.
It's still a solid monthly income producer, and worth owning if only as a means diversifying your dividend holdings.
3. AGNC Investment
Finally, add AGNC Investment(NASDAQ: AGNC) to your list of dividend stocks to consider buying if monthly payments better suit your needs.
It's another real estate investment trust, although a dramatically different one than Stag Industrial or Realty Income. See, AGNC Investment doesn't actually own any real estate; it's a REIT simply because it's a tax-advantaged corporate structure. Rather, it buys, holds, and sells interest-bearing mortgage-backed securities issued by government agencies like Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, capitalizing on the usual difference between long-term interest rates and short-term ones.
It can be a tricky business. In a normal environment, the price and payout of mortgage-backed securities are reasonably predictable. When interest rates are abnormally low and/or the yield curve inverts as it did back in 2022 -- pushing long-term interest rates below short-term rates -- the business model's underlying strategy simply ceases to work.
That's why this ticker's underperformed since mid-2021, when rates began to crumble. Well, that, and the fact that the REIT lowered its dividend payment in early 2020, and hasn't raised it since.
The market is looking past an important detail here, however, that you arguably shouldn't. That is, the yield curve uninverted late last year, and the spread between short-term interest rates and long-term rates continues to widen. This means AGNC Investment's core strategy for generating net profits is working again.
There's still risk here, to be sure. AGNC continues to report the occasional quarterly operating loss, for example, and lingering economic lethargy has strained the balance sheet.
There is also no guarantee this REIT will be raising its dividend anytime soon, and no clarity as to how big that bump might be if and when it does (nor how many more increases are in the cards after the next one, whenever it happens).
That's why this ticker isn't for everyone, and certainly not well-suited to be your first or only dividend payer. With a forward-looking yield of 16% based on a dividend that's still being reliably dished out, though, that risk might be worth it for some.
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James Brumley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Realty Income and Walmart. The Motley Fool recommends Stag Industrial. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
