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From Barron's 5-21-07

Stil Too Stingy.

"As corporations continue to favor share-repurchase programs as a way to boost stock prices, a small band of institutional investors and equity strategists are urging managements to focus more on an old-fashioned alternative: dividends...Over all, Corporate America remains stingy with dividends. Companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index are expected to dole out just 30% of their earnings in dividends in 2007, a record-low profit payout. The dividend yield on the S&P 500 is only 1.8%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average yields just a bit more: 2.1%. The S&P small- and mid-cap stock indexes yield only a bout 1%. U.S. companies have raised dividends at a double-digit rate in recent years, but operating earnings have been rising even more briskly. The S&P 500 payout ratio -- the percentage of earnings paid out to stockholders -- has been in a near-steady decline since the mid-1980s, when it stood at 55%. Prior to the early 1980s, buybacks were rare and companies took pride in their dividends, typically paying out more than half their profits. In 1980, 94% of the companies in the S&P 500 paid dividends; now 77%, or 387, do. And of the 6,000 companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq or American Stock Exchange that aren't in the S&P 500, just 40% pay dividends."

The banking, telecom and utility sectors remain great redoubts of dividends, while payouts remain scarce in the technology group. Below, notable stocks with some of the highest yields.

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