How much will Nvidia pay out in dividends this year

Nvidia (NVDA -1.95%) is the world’s leading provider of advanced processors for artificial intelligence (AI) and data center applications. Strong demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs) has helped drive its share price up massively over the past two years, including a roughly 156% gain so far in 2024 trading.

With a market cap of about $3.12 trillion at the time of writing, it’s also the second-largest company in the world — trailing only behind. Apple. And with Nvidia stock offering such impressive share price gains, it’s easy to overlook that it also pays a dividend.

Yes, Nvidia is a dividend stock (but barely)

That Nvidia gets little attention as a dividend stock is not surprising. The company’s quarterly payout is just $0.01 per share, or $0.04 on an annualized basis. Based on the current share price, this works out to a yield of just 0.03%.

Following the 10-for-1 stock split it completed in June, Nvidia now has about 24.6 billion shares outstanding. Based on the number of shares, the company will end up paying out about $984 million to shareholders in dividends this year.

While no one is buying Nvidia stock for its dividend today, it’s possible the company could dramatically increase its payout over time. At this point, it makes much more sense for the company to devote its capital to developing new hardware and software to strengthen its position in artificial intelligence, data centers and other business categories. The semiconductor leader’s investments in these categories have spurred sales and earnings growth that have been far more rewarding for investors than dividend payments would have been.

On the other hand, returning more cash directly to shareholders may become more sensible as Nvidia’s business matures and its growth rates slow. Tech giants including Apple and Microsoft they’ve followed that path, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Nvidia make dividend payments a larger portion of its stock holdings over the next decade.