It's that time of year. Snow is increasingly in the weather forecasts, family members are exchanging holiday gift lists, and investors are setting financial goals for 2025. For income investors, specifically, this may include investigating stocks that are potential buys and digging into how much they will provide in dividends next year.
With its high-yield dividend and a lengthy streak of hiking its payout higher, ExxonMobil (XOM -0.41%) is likely a stock that's appearing on investors' screens. Let's take a closer look at the oil supermajor and what investors can expect from it in terms of dividends in 2025.
For decades, this oil supermajor has pumped an increasing amount of passive income back to shareholders
It's not merely the fact that ExxonMobil has increased its dividend for 42 consecutive years that has income investors considering the stock. Management appears intent on consistently rewarding shareholders. On the company's first-quarter 2024 conference call, chief financial officer Kathy Mikells addressed ExxonMobil's shareholder-friendly interest in the dividend: " It needs to be sustainable. It needs to be competitive. It needs to be growing."
In 2022 and 2023, ExxonMobil paid dividends of $14.939 billion and $14.941 billion, respectively. While the company hiked its dividend per share by about 4% from 2022 to 2023, the nominal increase in cash dividends paid to shareholders reflects the company's share repurchases -- something that the company expects to continue at a rate of about $20 billion per year.
After ExxonMobil makes its last quarterly dividend payment in December, it will have paid $3.84 per share to shareholders for 2024. If it hikes the dividend per share by about 4% in 2025 and pays $3.99 per share, it's still likely that its total cash dividends paid will still be under $15 billion.
Is now the time to fuel your portfolio with ExxonMobil?
With its long-standing commitment to rewarding shareholders, ExxonMobil stock is a worthy consideration for greasing the wheels of your passive income machine and now seems like a great time with shares trading hands at only 13.2 times forward earnings.
