Ford Yields Nearly 5%. GM Is Buying Back $20 Billion in Stock. Which Is Better?

Quick Read

• Ford yields about 5% while GM yields about 1%, because GM pours most of its free cash into buybacks instead of dividends.

• Ford’s dividend eats about 39% of its low-end free cash flow guidance, a thinner cushion than GM’s 5%, with Model e losses the main threat.

• GM is the stronger business, but Ford gets the income vote for its 5% yield and a record of special dividends.

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Ford (NYSE:F) and General Motors (NYSE:GM) both reported Q3 2026 results in late October. What they told shareholders later was very different. Ford held its dividend at $0.15 per quarter. GM declared $0.18 and approved a new $20 billion buyback. If you are retired or close to it, how each company pays you out matters more than the headline earnings.

Ford Pays You Cash. GM Buys Back Its Stock.

Ford’s annualized dividend is $0.60. At the $12.44 November 6 close, that works out to a yield of about 4.8%, which is real spending money. GM pays $0.72 a year on an $86.17 share price, a yield of about 0.8%. GM uses most of its free cash for buybacks instead, with $6.3 billion bought back so far this year.

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Ford Has Less Room to Spare, but Still Enough

Ford’s dividend costs about $2.35 billion a year. That leaves a comfortable but modest buffer. Trucks bring in most of the cash. F-Series had its lowest incentive spend of the quarter. Software, services and parts now make up about 10% of revenue, and management calls that revenue countercyclical, meaning it tends to hold up when the economy slows. The main threat to the payout is Model e. Ford expects an EV loss of about $4 billion this year, on top of roughly $2.5 billion in higher commodity costs. CFO Sherry House said that “the progress isn’t going to be linear.”