We've had to shelve our popular "Dividends by the Numbers" series after the January 2026 edition. The series tracked the U.S. stock market's dividend metadata, which provided a simple, near real-time method of measuring the relative health of the U.S. economy.

Our analytical series was enabled by S&P Dow Jones Indices' Howard Silverblatt, who made the number and kinds of dividend actions announced for ordinary stocks traded in the U.S. stock market available each month. At this writing, it's possible S&P Dow Jones Indices will continue providing the stock market's dividend statistics on a quarterly basis, which had been the firm's practice, but they haven't yet indicated if they will.

We do however have other sources of dividend metadata to tap, which has at least two disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage is we have to generate a methodology for identifying dividend changes that may not align with the practices that S&P Dow Jones Indices, or its predecessor firms, Standard & Poor and, if we go back to the beginning, Standard Statistics, followed in compiling the data.

Another disadvantage is the scope of the alternate sources we're utilizing, which we've encountered as we simply sought to compile a list of what publicly-traded companies in the U.S. stock market declared they would decrease their dividends in February 2026. None of the sources we used to generate the list we're presenting offered a complete listing of the common stocks that decreased their dividends.

Because there isn't a single source that provides all dividend decrease data for the U.S. stock market for February 2026, we have to proceed with the assumption that the data we have represents a sample of the total.

We've opted to focus on dividend decreases because that data can provide a raw indication of which companies and industries may be experiencing some kind of distress. That distress may be significant in the case of firms that normally pay fixed dividends, which requires action on the part of their boards of directors to change their dividend payouts. Or, in the case of firms that pay variable dividends, like oil and gas royalty trusts, the number of dividend decreases that are announced can simply be an indication of whether oil prices were down in the preceding month. For variable dividend payers in the oil & gas sector, we consider any number above ten in a single month as indicating the industry is experiencing potentially contractionary headwinds.

Having now set these basic guidelines for evaluating the data, the following chart visualizes what we found for our February 2026 sampling of 26 dividend decreases:

Here's the list of sampled dividend decreases for February 2026:

• BCB Bancorp (NASDAQ: BCBP)
• CVR Partners (NYSE: UAN)
• Permianville Royalty Trust (NYSE: PVL)
• Golub Capital BDC (NASDAQ: GBDC)
• Natural Health Trends (NASDAQ: NHTC)
• Chesapeake Granite Wash Trust (NYSE: CHKR)
• LyondellBasell Industries (NYSE: LYB)
• AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE: AU)
• Sabine Royalty Trust (NYSE: SBR)
• Manhattan Bridge Capital (REIT-Mortgage) (NASDAQ: LOAN)
• Insteel Industries (NASDAQ: IIIN)
• Rayonier (REIT-Materials) (NYSE: RYN)
• TPG Specialty Lending (NYSE: TSLX)
• OFS Credit (NASDAQ: OCCI)
• Franklin BSP Realty Trust (REIT-Mortgage) (NYSE: FBRT)
• Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE: PBT)
• Gerdau S.A. (NYSE: GGB)
• PermRock Royalty Trust (NYSE: PRT)
• MidCap Financial Investment (NASDAQ: MFIC)
• Vitesse Energy (NYSE: VTS)
• Morgan Stanley Direct Lending (NYSE: MSDL)
• Eagle Point Credit (NYSE: ECC)
• Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending (NYSE: NCDL)
• TXO Energy Partners (NYSE: TXO)
• Mesa Royalty Trust (NYSE: MTR)
• Horizon Tech Finance (NYSE: HRZN)
• BlackRock TCP (NASDAQ: TCPC)

Starting with the oil & gas industry, we count eight royalty trusts that pay variable distributions announcing decreased dividend payments to their shareholders, which falls below the threshold of ten we've established for indicating anything other than month-to-month noise for the sector. This makes sense because oil prices had been falling in January 2026. It's won't be until March 2026 that the U.S. military action against Iran that has prompted an increase in oil prices will reverse that trend, which bodes well for these firms in April. At this writing, the expectations are this spike will be comparatively short lived, which is why the stock prices of major oil firms haven't boomed in response.

The most notable dividend decreases announced in February 2026 are the eight reductions among firms in the financial service sector. These are primarily made up of Business Development Companies, or BDCs, which provide loans to medium-to-small businesses. These firms have been hit by a combination of falling interest rates, which puts pressure on their profitability margins, and the disruption of businesses to which they lend from artificial intelligence technologies. In recent months, the outlook of firms in the Software as a Service (SAAS) sub-sector of the information technology sector have been absolutely hammered by the increasing capabilities of AI.

Closing out the list, four firms in the Materials industry (steel foundries, gold miners, and timber) announced dividend decreases. There two each in the chemical and real estate sectors, and one each in the banking and consumer goods industrial categories.

On the whole, with less than 10 firms in oil and gas sector and fewer than 50 overall, the total number of dividend decreases in our February 2026 sample falls below the threshold that signals recessionary conditions are present within the U.S. economy.

Image credit: Dividends definition. State Savings and Loan Association advertisement on Page 9 of Beatrice, Nebraska's Beatrice Daily Express, 12 December 1921. Chronicling America. [Online Database]. 12 December 1921. Public domain image.