Will Amazon Ever Pay A Dividend?

Up to date on July twenty eighth, 2025 by Bob Ciura

Over the previous decade, many know-how shares similar to Alphabet (GOOG)(GOOGL), Meta Platforms (META), and extra have initiated dividend funds to shareholders.

Whereas the know-how business has extensively embraced dividends, not all tech corporations pay dividends.

One lingering holdout to paying dividends to shareholders is e-commerce big Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN).

Reasonably than return money to shareholders, Amazon continues to plow its money movement again into the enterprise.

The choice whether or not or not an organization ought to pay a dividend is dependent upon many elements. 1000’s of shares pay dividends to shareholders, and an elite few have maintained lengthy histories of elevating their dividends yearly.

For instance, the Dividend Aristocrats are a bunch of 69 shares within the S&P 500 which have raised their dividends for 25+ years in a row.

You may obtain an Excel spreadsheet of all Dividend Aristocrats (with vital monetary metrics similar to price-to-earnings ratios and dividend yields) by clicking the hyperlink under:

Disclaimer: Certain Dividend shouldn’t be affiliated with S&P World in any means. S&P World owns and maintains The Dividend Aristocrats Index. The data on this article and downloadable spreadsheet relies on Certain Dividend’s personal overview, abstract, and evaluation of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF (NOBL) and different sources, and is supposed to assist particular person buyers higher perceive this ETF and the index upon which it’s based mostly. Not one of the info on this article or spreadsheet is official knowledge from S&P World. Seek the advice of S&P World for official info.

Amazon’s lack of a dividend definitely has not damage buyers thus far, as Amazon has been a premier tech inventory.

Over the previous 10 years, Amazon inventory generated whole returns of practically 800%.

However for earnings buyers, Amazon might not be a pretty possibility because of the lack of a dividend fee.

This text will focus on the possibilities of Amazon ever paying a dividend.

Enterprise Overview

Amazon is a web based retailer that operates an enormous e-commerce platform the place customers can purchase nearly something with their computer systems or smartphones.

Amazon is a mega-cap inventory with a market cap of greater than $2 trillion. It operates via the next segments:

North America
Worldwide
Amazon Internet Providers

The North America and Worldwide segments embody the worldwide retail platform of shopper merchandise via the corporate’s web sites.

The Amazon Internet Providers phase sells subscriptions for cloud computing and storage providers to customers, start-ups, enterprises, authorities companies, and tutorial establishments.

Amazon’s e-commerce operations fueled its huge income progress over the previous decade. The corporate noticed continued progress in the latest quarter.

Associated: Which is the higher funding, dividend shares or progress shares?

Within the 2025 first quarter, income of $155.7 billion elevated 9% year-over-year, and beat analyst estimates by $546 million.

By phase, North America gross sales elevated 8% year-over-year to $92.9 billion. Worldwide gross sales rose 5% year-over-year to $33.5 billion (up 8% excluding foreign money alternate). Lastly, AWS gross sales grew 17% year-over-year to $29.3 billion.

Supply: Investor Presentation

Amazon’s earnings-per-share elevated 62% within the first quarter, to $1.59.

Whereas the retail enterprise nonetheless operates at low gross margins, it continues to generate robust income progress.

Individually, the AWS phase is extremely worthwhile, and is essentially the rationale for Amazon’s spectacular earnings progress. Such robust earnings progress improves Amazon’s possibilities of paying a dividend in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later.

That stated, the corporate nonetheless plans to take a position closely in progress, which makes for uneven earnings-per-share from one quarter to the subsequent.

Development Prospects

As is typical with many know-how corporations, progress funding is Amazon’s high strategic precedence. That is partly out of necessity.

Issues transfer extraordinarily quick in know-how, which is a extremely aggressive business. Know-how corporations want to take a position massive quantities to remain forward of the pack.

Amazon isn’t any completely different—it’s making main investments to proceed constructing its on-line retail platform. Amazon continues to develop its retail enterprise.

It additionally acquired pure and natural grocer Complete Meals for practically $14 billion. This gave Amazon the brick-and-mortar footprint it desired to additional increase its attain in groceries.

Amazon isn’t stopping there. Along with the retail business, it goals to unfold its tentacles into different industries as nicely, together with media and healthcare.

Amazon has constructed a large media platform wherein it distributes content material to its Amazon Prime members.

Making unique content material is one other extremely capital-intensive endeavor, which would require enormous sums to ensure that Amazon to compete with the likes of streaming giants Netflix (NFLX) and Hulu, in addition to different tv and film studios.

Its media ambitions had been augmented by its 2022 acquisition of MGM for $8.5 billion.

Now that Amazon dominates retail and media content material, it’s readying a much bigger transfer into the healthcare business.

In 2022 Amazon acquired One Medical in a $3.9 billion all-cash transaction, together with One Medical’s debt. One Medical is a nationwide major care firm.

These investments will gasoline Amazon’s income progress, which is what the corporate’s buyers are primarily involved with. Nonetheless, such aggressive spending will restrict Amazon’s capability to pay dividends to shareholders, at the least for a while.

For the 2025 second quarter, Amazon expects web gross sales in a spread of $159.0 billion and $164.0 billion, which might signify year-over-year progress of seven% to 11%.

Will Amazon Ever Pay A Dividend?

Amazon has joined the ranks of worthwhile tech corporations like Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco, all of which generate excessive earnings-per-share. Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco are actually blue-chip tech dividend payers.

In idea, Amazon might pay a dividend, as the corporate must be worthwhile in fiscal 2025. Amazon’s earnings-per-share are forecast to be $6.28 for fiscal 2025.

The corporate can use its income for a variety of functions, together with debt reimbursement, reinvestment in future progress initiatives, paying dividends, or share buybacks.

If Amazon selected to, it might distribute a dividend to shareholders, though any introduced dividend payout would doubtless be small, by way of the dividend yield.

For instance, even when Amazon maintained a dividend payout ratio of 25%, which might be acceptable for a growth-oriented tech firm, the dividend of $1.57 per share would signify only a ~0.7% yield.

This may nonetheless be an unappealing yield for a lot of earnings buyers.

Ultimate Ideas

Amazon has been some of the spectacular progress corporations in historical past. It now dominates the web retail business. It’s also an enormous cloud providers supplier, in addition to a film studio and content material streaming big.

Finally, an organization has to make the choice to provoke a dividend fee. That is typically completed when future progress not requires such heavy funding.

For Amazon, the corporate nonetheless has many new avenues for future enlargement in thoughts, together with (however not restricted to) media content material, grocery shops, and well being care.

Development continues to be very a lot the highest precedence for Amazon. Consequently, buyers shouldn’t count on a dividend fee any time quickly.

At Certain Dividend, we frequently advocate for investing in corporations with a excessive chance of accelerating their dividends each yr.

If that technique appeals to you, it might be helpful to flick thru the next databases of dividend progress shares:

The Dividend Achievers Record is comprised of ~400 shares with 10+ years of consecutive dividend will increase.
The Dividend Kings Record is much more unique than the Dividend Aristocrats. It’s comprised of 55 shares with 50+ years of consecutive dividend will increase.
The Excessive Yield Dividend Kings Record is comprised of the 20 Dividend Kings with the very best present yields.
The Blue Chip Shares Record: shares that qualify as Dividend Achievers, Dividend Aristocrats, and/or Dividend Kings
The Excessive Dividend Shares Record: shares that attraction to buyers within the highest yields of 5% or extra.
The Month-to-month Dividend Shares Record: shares that pay dividends each month, for 12 dividend funds per yr.
The Dividend Champions Record: shares which have elevated their dividends for 25+ consecutive years.Word: Not all Dividend Champions are Dividend Aristocrats as a result of Dividend Aristocrats have extra necessities like being in The S&P 500.
The Dividend Contenders Record: 10-24 consecutive years of dividend will increase.
The Dividend Challengers Record: 5-9 consecutive years of dividend will increase.