Unexpectedly Intriguing!
02 July 2025
An An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull and bear playing a casino game in which a spinning wheel with two halves, one named 'NET POSITIVE' and the other named 'NET NEGATIVE' has settled on the 'NET NEGATIVE' side. Image generated with Microsoft Copilot Designer.

June 2025 was another net-negative month for the dividend paying stocks of the U.S. stock market.

That's based on the dividend metadata compiled for the entire market by Standard & Poor. When we add up all the favorable year-over-year dividend actions like dividend increases, extra dividends and resumptions during the month and then subtract all the unfavorable actions, like announced dividend decreases, the resulting single number that summarizes all the dividend changes of June 2025 is -4.

That's an improvement over the much more negative result we reported for May 2025. While still negative, the underlying data points to a mixed picture for U.S. dividend paying firms. The good news is that fewer firms announced reduced dividends than last month, which was tempered by the bad news of fewer firms announcing dividend rises.

All of June 2024's favorable and unfavorable dividend actions are tallied in the following table, which shows how much they changed since June 2024 (year-over-year) and since May 2025 (month-over-month).

Dividend Changes in June 2025
   Jun-2025  May-2025    MoM  Jun-2024    YoY
Total Declarations 4,970 4,886 84 5,293 -323
Favorable 118 203 -85 113 5
- Increases 60 130 -70 74 -14
- Special/Extra 58 72 -14 39 19
- Resumed 0 1 -1 0 0 ◀▶
Unfavorable 13 21 -8 4 9
- Decreases 13 21 -8 4 9
- Omitted/Passed 0 0 0 ◀▶ 0 0 ◀▶

The following chart tracks the monthly counts of dividend increases and decreases from January 2004 through June 2025:

Number of Public U.S. Firms Increasing or Decreasing their Dividends Each Month, January 2004 - June 2025

The chart reveals the number of firms announcing decreased dividends in June 2025 remains well below the threshold that indicates recessionary conditions are present within the U.S. economy. However, the more-than-two-year downtrend for dividend increases shown on the chart suggests an ongoing tightening operating environment for firms, which are finding it harder to grow their dividends and, by extension, their businesses.

The next chart shows how the dividend increases and decreases reported during the just-completed 2025-Q2 compares with each of the preceding four quarters:

Number of U.S. Firms Increasing and Decreasing Dividends by Quarter, 2024-Q2 through 2025-Q2

This chart emphasizes the year-over-year reduction in the number of dividend increases between 2024-Q2 and 2025-Q2.

References

Standard and Poor. S&P Market Attributes Web File. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 1 July 2025.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull and bear playing a casino game in which a spinning wheel with two halves, one named 'NET POSITIVE' and the other named 'NET NEGATIVE' has settled on the 'NET NEGATIVE' side", which we followed up with a second prompt: "Add a sign labeled 'DIVIDEND METADATA' above the wheel. Also make the picture more colorful."

Labels: ,

About Political Calculations

Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:

ironman at politicalcalculations

Thanks in advance!

Recent Posts

Indices, Futures, and Bonds

Closing values for previous trading day.

Most Popular Posts
Quick Index

Site Data

This site is primarily powered by:

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

CSS Validation

Valid CSS!

RSS Site Feed

AddThis Feed Button

JavaScript

The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.

Other Cool Resources

Blog Roll

Market Links

Useful Election Data
Charities We Support
Shopping Guides
Recommended Reading
Recently Shopped

Seeking Alpha Certified

Archives