Joel South
8 min read
Quick Read
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Energy Transfer (ET) yields 6.25% and Altria (MO) yields 6.22%, but each demands a specific tradeoff: a K-1 tax form or secular cigarette volume decline.
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AT&T’s yield has slipped to 4.34% after a 6.5% year-to-date rally, yet its free cash flow is guided above $18B for 2026, making it the cleanest coverage story on the list.
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Verizon carries $136.5B in unsecured debt after the Frontier acquisition, pushing net debt to EBITDA to 2.5x despite raising its dividend for roughly 18 consecutive years.
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High yields exist for reasons, and the promise of this roster is to name each reason out loud. Across telecom, tobacco and midstream energy, four of these five NYSE-listed dividend payers currently clear the 5% mark. But after AT&T’s 2022 payout reset, the stock has rallied enough this year that its yield now prints at 4.23%. We are flagging that clearly rather than dropping it, because the tradeoff story is exactly what income investors need to see.
Verizon Communications
Verizon (NYSE:VZ) traded around $50.67 on Friday, Sept. 11, with a dividend yield of 5.59% on a forward annualized payout of $2.83 per share. The Q2 2026 dividend was raised to 70 cents from 69 cents, extending a payout that has stepped higher every year in the visible modern record back through the mid-2000s.
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Safety reads well on the cash-flow line. Q2 2026 free cash flow was $6.43 billion, up 27.1%, and management raised full-year 2026 free cash flow guidance to $21.94 to $22.14 billion against a buyback target of up to $4.5 billion. Trailing EPS of $3.79 comfortably covers the annual payout. The complication is leverage: total unsecured debt sits at $136.5 billion and net unsecured debt to adjusted EBITDA rose to 2.5x from 2.2x at year-end 2025 after the Frontier acquisition closed on Jan. 20.
