Chris Lange
4 min read
Quick Read
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DUK has delivered 20-plus consecutive annual dividend increases, though $1,000 invested a decade ago returned 127% versus the S&P 500’s 258%.
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Duke’s $103 billion capital plan and 7.8 gigawatts of signed data center deals back projected 5% to 7% EPS growth starting in 2028.
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Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and Duke Energy didn’t make the cut. Enter your email to see the names that beat DUK. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut.
Two Decades of Doing the Same Boring Thing
Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) is a regulated electric and gas utility headquartered in Charlotte, NC, serving roughly 8.73 million retail electric customers across the Carolinas, Florida, and the Midwest. Regulated means state commissions approve the rates Duke can charge, which caps the upside and cushions the downside. That structure is why the dividend behaves the way it does.
This July, Duke bumped the quarterly payout to $1.085, a 2% increase that marked over 20 years of consecutive annual dividend increases. CFO Brian Savoy called it “consistent with growth in recent years”. Look at the payment history and it is almost hypnotic: $0.765 in 2012, $0.945 in 2019, $1.085 today. One modest step per year, every year.
What $1,000 Actually Did
1-Year Return
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Initial Investment: $1,000
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Total Return: 1.22%
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S&P 500 (same period): 16.22%
5-Year Return
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Initial Investment: $1,000
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Total Return: 40.22%
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S&P 500 (same period): 71.58%
10-Year Return
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Why Didn’t DUK Make The Top 10 List?
24/7 Wall St has helped investors make money for over two decades, and our top analysts just finished ranking the definitive Top 10 Stocks To Buy Now. Not the ten biggest companies. Not the ten everyone is arguing about. The ten best stocks to buy right now.
And DUK didn’t make the cut!
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Initial Investment: $1,000
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Total Return: 127.21%
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S&P 500 (same period): 258.43%
Duke trailed the S&P at every horizon. That is the trade. You accepted a slower price return in exchange for a check that arrived four times a year and got a little bigger every summer. The forward annualized dividend now runs $4.34, and the current yield sits at 3.57%. Reinvested through the decade, that income stream did most of the work the price chart never showed (the whole idea behind a dividend ladder you never have to sell out of, which we walked through in a free guide: Never Touch the Principal).
