Collecting some recurring income is a great way to bolster your financial position and make you less reliant on your day job for money. And investing in dividend stocks is one way you can accomplish that. While most of them don't pay on a monthly basis, that doesn't mean you can't collect money each month from a variety of different investments.
Below, I'll show you how investing approximately $72,036 across three stocks -- Gilead Sciences (GILD -1.49%), Altria (MO 0.35%), and Verizon Communications (VZ 0.35%) -- could generate $300 in monthly dividends for you.
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1. Gilead Sciences -- $28,571
Healthcare company Gilead Sciences currently pays a yield of 4.2%. Investing $28,571 into this stock would generate $300 every March, June, September, and December for you -- which is its current payment schedule. And there's a good chance that your payouts will increase over time given that Gilead has been raising its dividend in recent years, most recently with a 4.4% increase from quarterly payouts of $0.68 to $0.71 earlier this year.
Gilead may have disappointed investors over the past year as its COVID-19 treatment, remdesivir, which many thought could be be a silver bullet to stop the virus in its tracks, failed to live up to the hype. The World Health Organization even recommended against using the drug. However, it remains in use and helped to boost the company's sales for the first three months of 2021; revenue grew by 16% year over year to $6.4 billion. Gilead expects that its diluted earnings per share (EPS) this year will come in within a range of $4.75 and $5.45. Even on the low end of that forecast, that would put the company's payout ratio at just 60%, which is very sustainable. In both 2019 and 2018, years unaffected by the pandemic, the company's EPS was comfortably above $4.
Investors shouldn't be too concerned that the dividend will be in trouble if remdesivir becomes a non-factor; the payouts look safe and the stock can be a solid buy for income investors.
2. Altria -- $16,438
Tobacco giant Altria currently pays the largest yield on this list at 7.3%. For this stock to make you $300 every quarter, you would only need to invest $16,438. The company's current quarterly payment is $0.86, and the Dividend Aristocrat has raised its payouts by 54% in the past five years -- it was paying $0.56 in early 2016. Altria normally makes dividend payments every January, April, July, and October.
Sales for the period ending March 31 totaled more than $6 billion, down 5% year over year. However, the company's operating profit was up more than 15% due to improvements in gross margin, and if not for losses on its investments totaling $161 million, its pre-tax profits would have been nearly identical to what they were a year ago (instead, they were down by 8%).
Altria expects to see its adjusted diluted EPS grow between 3% to 6% in 2021, falling within a range of $4.49 and $4.62. At the bottom of that guidance, the company's payout ratio would be around 77%. Although that's a bit higher than Gilead's, it still shouldn't necessarily cause much concern for investors. Altria remains one of the better high-yielding stocks that you can buy today, and one that could generate significant dividend income over the long term.
3. Verizon -- $27,027
Big telecom stocks are great places to put your money if you want some solid dividend income. Since they provide necessities for millions of consumers, that translates into some great recurring revenue for the businesses and long-term stability for their investors. Verizon is no exception to that; amid the pandemic last year, the company's net income of $17.8 billion was down 8% year over year, but that was still better than 2018's tally of $15.5 billion.
In 2021, the company projects that its adjusted EPS will be at least $5, which is nearly double the $2.51 that investors can expect from the dividend on an annual basis. There is certainly room for the payouts to get bigger, and the company did raise them by 2% last year, from $0.6150 to $0.6275. Verizon makes payments every February, May, August, and November. With a yield of 4.4%, you will need to invest slightly more than $27,027 into the stock to expect to collect $300 at each one of those intervals.
Verizon is coming off a strong start to 2021 in which its first-quarter net income of $5.4 billion soared more than 25% year over year; it benefited from positive sales growth across all of its major segments, including consumer, where sales were up around 5%. The company looks to be in great shape and could be one of the winners in a U.S. economy that's opening back up and returning to normalcy in many areas.
