Will Amazon Ever Pay A Dividend?

Up to date on August twenty second, 2025 by Bob Ciura

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

Whereas the expertise trade has broadly embraced dividends, not all tech corporations pay dividends.

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

Moderately 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 will depend on 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 possibly can obtain an Excel spreadsheet of all Dividend Aristocrats (with necessary monetary metrics corresponding to price-to-earnings ratios and dividend yields) by clicking the hyperlink beneath:

Disclaimer: Certain Dividend is just not affiliated with S&P World in any manner. S&P World owns and maintains The Dividend Aristocrats Index. The data on this article and downloadable spreadsheet is predicated on Certain Dividend’s personal evaluation, abstract, and evaluation of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF (NOBL) and different sources, and is supposed to assist particular person traders higher perceive this ETF and the index upon which it’s primarily based. Not one of the info on this article or spreadsheet is official information from S&P World. Seek the advice of S&P World for official info.

Amazon’s lack of a dividend actually has not harm traders so far, as Amazon has been a premier tech inventory.

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

However for earnings traders, Amazon might not be a beautiful choice because of the lack of a dividend cost.

This text will talk about the probabilities of Amazon ever paying a dividend.

Enterprise Overview

Amazon is a web based retailer that operates an enormous e-commerce platform the place shoppers should buy just about something with their computer systems or smartphones.

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

North America
Worldwide
Amazon Internet Companies

The North America and Worldwide segments embrace the worldwide retail platform of shopper merchandise by way of the corporate’s web sites.

The Amazon Internet Companies section sells subscriptions for cloud computing and storage providers to shoppers, start-ups, enterprises, authorities companies, and educational 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 second quarter, income of $167.7 billion beat analyst estimates by $5.59 billion, and elevated 12% year-over-year on a forex impartial foundation.

By section, North America gross sales elevated 11% year-over-year to $100.1 billion. Worldwide gross sales elevated 16% year-over-year to $36.8 billion, or 11% excluding overseas alternate translation. Lastly, AWS section gross sales elevated 17.5% year-over-year to $30.9 billion.

Amazon’s earnings-per-share elevated 33% to $1.68 per diluted share, within the second quarter.

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

Individually, the AWS section is very worthwhile, and is basically the explanation for Amazon’s spectacular earnings progress. Such robust earnings progress improves Amazon’s probabilities of paying a dividend in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later.

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

Development Prospects

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

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

Amazon is not 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 develop its attain in groceries.

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

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

Making unique content material is one other extremely capital-intensive endeavor, which would require big 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 have 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 trade.

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 main care firm.

These investments will gas Amazon’s income progress, which is what the corporate’s traders are primarily involved with. However, such aggressive spending will restrict Amazon’s potential to pay dividends to shareholders, not less than for a while.

For the 2025 third quarter, Amazon expects internet gross sales in a spread of $174.0 billion and $179.5 billion, which might characterize year-over-year progress of 10% to 13%.

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 at the moment are blue-chip tech dividend payers.

In idea, Amazon may pay a dividend, as the corporate must be worthwhile in fiscal 2025. Amazon’s earnings-per-share are forecast to be $6.70 for fiscal 2025.

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

If Amazon selected to, it may distribute a dividend to shareholders, though any introduced dividend payout would possible 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 $1.67 per share would characterize only a ~0.7% yield.

This is able to nonetheless be an unappealing yield for a lot of earnings traders.

Last Ideas

Amazon has been some of the spectacular progress corporations in historical past. It now dominates the web retail trade. It is usually 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 cost. That is typically finished when future progress not requires such heavy funding.

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

Development remains to be very a lot the highest precedence for Amazon. Because of this, traders shouldn’t anticipate a dividend cost any time quickly.

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

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

The Dividend Achievers Checklist is comprised of ~400 shares with 10+ years of consecutive dividend will increase.
The Dividend Kings Checklist 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 Checklist is comprised of the 20 Dividend Kings with the best present yields.
The Blue Chip Shares Checklist: shares that qualify as Dividend Achievers, Dividend Aristocrats, and/or Dividend Kings
The Excessive Dividend Shares Checklist: shares that enchantment to traders within the highest yields of 5% or extra.
The Month-to-month Dividend Shares Checklist: shares that pay dividends each month, for 12 dividend funds per yr.
The Dividend Champions Checklist: shares which have elevated their dividends for 25+ consecutive years.Be aware: Not all Dividend Champions are Dividend Aristocrats as a result of Dividend Aristocrats have further necessities like being in The S&P 500.
The Dividend Contenders Checklist: 10-24 consecutive years of dividend will increase.
The Dividend Challengers Checklist: 5-9 consecutive years of dividend will increase.