Investors tend to view dividends as a general signal of corporate financial quality. The logic is sound: Companies typically don’t pledge to pay their shareholders a regular, fixed sum unless they can afford it with plenty of room to spare. So where you find dividends, you’ll often find a healthy bottom line.
But that assumption has its limits. As a dividend yield starts to climb well above market and sector norms, investors begin to wonder about that payout’s sustainability. It could be that the company is dedicating too high a percentage of its profits to maintaining that dividend. Or it could be that the yield is growing because shares are diving, reflecting some sort of fundamental weakness.
For many reasons, “high” and “reliable” are two yield adjectives that aren’t frequently joined at the hip. But it doesn’t mean you’ll never find the two hanging out.
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Today, we’ll explore five stocks doling out yields north of 4% — well above the average — that appear to be reasonably safe.
Data is as of July 22, 2026.
Our methodology for finding “safe” dividend stocks
Before we move on, let’s be crystal clear: No dividend on this planet is 100% safe.
That doesn’t mean we think they’re about to or even that they ever will. We’re just stressing the importance of understanding the nature of dividends. With few exceptions — namely, real estate investment trusts (REITs) and business development companies (BDCs) — businesses aren’t inherently obligated to pay us a dime, and they certainly don’t have to ensure that we collect a certain level of income.
The best we can do is look for signs that a company can afford its dividend, and that management values maintaining or growing that dividend.
To get to our list of five safe, high-yield dividend stocks, I’ve looked for U.S.-domiciled and traded equities with the following features:
- At least $500 million in market capitalization
- A dividend yield of at least 4%
- At least 10 consecutive years of stable or growing dividends
- A dividend payout ratio of no more than 60% of estimates for 2026 adjusted earnings per share (in other words, they pay out no more than 60% of their profits as dividends)
- An average broker recommendation of 2.5 or lower within the ratings scale established by S&P Global Market Intelligence, implying they’re a consensus Buy.
Again, while that doesn’t guarantee that any of these dividends will be the same size (or be around at all) next year, next month or even next week, it may help us identify generous dividends that are more stable than similar-yielding companies.
Stocks are listed in reverse order of their consensus ratings — the lower the number, the better the analyst rating.
OceanFirst Financial
(Image credit: Getty Images)
- Sector: Financials
- Market value: $1.1 billion
- Dividend yield: 4.1%
- Consensus rating: 2.29 (Buy)
There’s little out of the ordinary here. OceanFirst offers consumer products such as savings and checking accounts, money market accounts, auto loans, student loans and mortgages. It also provides commercial and industrial loans, as well as real estate loans for commercial and multifamily properties.
OceanFirst is looking to bolster that latter business through its “Premier Banking” initiative, in which the company is prioritizing relationship-building and tailored solutions to attract commercial clients.
“Although we believe there remains a good amount of uncertainty regarding the ultimate ROI of the Premier Bank initiative (and the [commercial and industrial] banking hires), the project is off to a strong start and has the potential to meaningfully enhance OCFC’s deposit base and franchise value if successful,” write Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analysts Tim Switzer and Emily Lee, who rate the financial stock at Outperform.
The company also recently acquired commercial bank Flushing Financial, then announced it would be selling $1.4 billion in multifamily loans, which would amount to most of the multifamily loans it acquired from FFIC. In so doing, OCFC significantly reduced its overall exposure to multifamily housing.
OceanFirst isn’t an annual dividend raiser, but it has improved its cash distribution a few times over the past decade. Its current quarterly payout of 20 cents per share amounts to a reasonable 43% of this year’s earnings estimates — and more encouraging, just 35% of expected 2027 profits, which are expected to pop by 24% year over year.
Verizon Communications
(Image credit: Education Images / Contributor)
- Sector: Communication services
- Market value: $184.9 billion
- Dividend yield: 6.4%
- Consensus rating: 2.27 (Buy)
Verizon somewhat resembles a utility stock, operating against precious few competitors — VZ, AT&T (T) and T-Mobile (TMUS) account for virtually all of the postpaid market — but also within saturated businesses that have limited room for organic growth.
It’s currently trying to fend off its competitors by improving the customer experience.
“VZ delivered a major turnaround in subscribers despite being early days of its customer first strategy,” Oppenheimer analysts (Outperform) wrote in April following the company’s most recent earnings report. “Management is shifting from price increases and expensive device promotions to adding value, improving segmentation, and increasing automation. This improves CX, retention, and margins. The pivot comes at a slight sacrifice to short-term revenue growth, but is critical for growing subscribers — where share losses had caused the stock to lag peers over the past five years.”
Verizon’s growth plans also include its buyout of local exchange carrier Frontier Communications, which closed in January 2026. “Verizon is looking to expand both its spectrum asset and geographic footprint through acquisitions,” says Argus Research analyst Marie Ferguson (Buy). “We think the acquisition with Frontier, a local exchange carrier (LEC), will help Verizon expand into the contested U.S. suburban and rural broadband market and drive earnings growth of about 6% in 2026.”
VZ is also like utilities in that it makes up for its lack of growth prospects by paying a generous dividend. The payout, which has improved for 20 consecutive years, currently represents 58% of 2026 profit estimates.
Eastman Chemical
(Image credit: Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
- Sector: Materials
- Market value: $7.98 billion
- Dividend yield: 4.8%
- Consensus rating: 2.00 (Buy)
Materials stocks are inherently cyclical, hinging not only on broader economic strength but also industry demand and individual product-demand cycles. For instance, right now, Eastman and other chemicals firms are struggling with weak demand from more cyclical industries such as construction, automobiles and consumer durables (i.e., appliances and electronics).
Still, Wall Street is broadly bullish on the name compared to its peers.
“Innovation and sustainability initiatives will likely help the company outpace end market demand trends,” say Jefferies analysts, who call the stock a Buy. “The company’s methanolysis technology is now proven at scale, and growth will likely be driven both by premium recycled content displacing mechanically recycled alternatives, and by new product launches from consumer brands seeking differentiated sustainability offerings. Strategic customer commitments from major packaging and consumer goods companies reinforce the durability of this demand even in a weaker macro environment.”
Cyclical companies have to be somewhat conservative with their dividends, as their bottom lines can be more volatile than other industries. Still, despite what a high yield of almost 5% might suggest, Eastman’s payout ratio of 54% isn’t out of line with its peers.
Fidelity National Financial
(Image credit: Lori Moffett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
- Sector: Financials
- Market value: $13.5 billion
- Dividend yield: 4.1%
- Consensus rating: 1.60 (Buy)
Title insurers benefit from mortgage volumes, which tend to be spurred by lower interest rates. Just consider this bull case from Truist Managing Director Mark Hughes (Buy):
“FNF is the nation’s largest title insurer; the company should be a beneficiary of lower interest rates as a result of Federal Reserve [easing]. … The macroeconomic indicators for the housing market are a primary driver of FNF’s stock price.”
However, Fidelity National Financial might be trying to swim upstream right now. Because while lower rates appeared to be the Federal Reserve’s path of least resistance earlier in 2026, persistently high inflation has America’s central bank increasingly poised to raise its target rate by the end of the year.
But even without Fed help in the near term, there are other reasons to like Fidelity National. Hughes adds that “Chairman Bill Foley and his team have a long track record of generating outsized returns across a broad spectrum of end markets.” And Keefe, Bruyette & Woods’ Bose George and Frankie Labetti (Outperform) add that, “As the largest title insurer in terms of market share, we believe FNF will continue to be able to use its scale to generate industry-leading margins.”
Insurers also tend not to go out on a ledge when paying for their dividends, and FNF is no exception. It pays only about 40% of 2026 earnings estimates to fuel its 4.1% dividend.
American Tower
(Image credit: Getty Images)
- Sector: Real estate
- Market value: $77.4 billion
- Dividend yield: 4.3%
- Consensus rating: 1.56 (Buy)
AMT shares a headwind with Verizon — a saturated U.S. market — but has other routes to growth.
“The company is a leader in tower services, and while domestic mobile spending has flattened, the company is focusing on international expansion of 5G networks and growth in mobile data consumption,” says Argus Research’s Ferguson (Buy). “It also entered the data center market through its 2021 joint venture ownership of CoreSite, which we see as a positive.”
American Tower has been the weakest of these five safe dividend stocks over the past year, losing about 25% of its value. That’s at least in part over worries that more promotional activity in the wireless business could dampen longer-term investments, which could in turn mute tower leasing growth.
But Citi’s Michael Rollins (Buy) sees leasing activity stabilizing and the possibility for a new entrant into the mobile service space. “We also see potential for AMT to continue to evolve its data center business strategy, while management commentary leads us to believe the leaning is still as a net investor, rather than a net seller,” he says.
As for the distribution? While higher-than-average payouts are the norm because of REITs’ dividend mandate, AMT has never flashed a monster headline yield — indeed, January 2026 marked the first time shares have regularly paid above 4%.
Still, for now, the dividend is well-covered. When it comes to evaluating REIT dividends, the metric to use isn’t EPS, but funds from operations (FFO), which measure the cash generated from a REIT’s core operations. Typically, anything below 80% is considered safe, and American Tower’s dividend currently represents just 70% of this year’s FFO estimates.
