Dividend Calculator
Project a dividend position year by year — with reinvestment compounding shares or dividends piling up as cash. Annual model, every assumption visible, nothing predicted.
| Year | Dividends | Shares | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $400.00 | 103.8095 | $105.00 | $10,900.00 |
| 2 | $436.00 | 107.7642 | $110.25 | $11,881.00 |
| 3 | $475.24 | 111.8695 | $115.76 | $12,950.29 |
| 4 | $518.01 | 116.1312 | $121.55 | $14,115.82 |
| 5 | $564.63 | 120.5552 | $127.63 | $15,386.24 |
| 6 | $615.45 | 125.1478 | $134.01 | $16,771.00 |
| 7 | $670.84 | 129.9153 | $140.71 | $18,280.39 |
| 8 | $731.22 | 134.8645 | $147.75 | $19,925.63 |
| 9 | $797.03 | 140.0022 | $155.13 | $21,718.93 |
| 10 | $868.76 | 145.3356 | $162.89 | $23,673.64 |
Settings
Keyboard shortcuts
| Tab / Shift+Tab | Next / previous field |
| ↑ / ↓ | Step a value by 1 (Shift: 10, Alt: 0.1) |
| Enter | Copy the primary result |
| [ / ] | Fewer / more decimal places (percent) |
| Esc | Clear the field |
How the projection works
The model is four lines, run once per year with exact arithmetic:
- Dividends paid = shares × dividend per share.
- The share price grows by the price-growth rate; the dividend per share grows by the dividend-growth rate.
- With DRIP on, the dividends buy shares at the new price; with DRIP off, they accumulate as cash.
- Position value = shares × price, plus any cash.
The worked example — $10,000 at a 4% yield, both growth rates at 5%, reinvested for ten years — shows the DRIP flywheel in the table: dividends rise every single year even though the yield never changes, because both the per-share payment and the share count are climbing. Turn DRIP off and dividends still grow (the rate sees to that) but the share count freezes, and the gap between the two futures widens each year.
The effective-CAGR row annualizes the whole journey so you can compare it against anything else — it's the same figure the CAGR calculator computes from the start and end values. And a caution the table states by omission: nothing here models dividend cuts, taxes on distributions, or the fact that high growth assumptions quietly become heroic after year five. Assumptions in, arithmetic out.
Dividend FAQ
How does dividend reinvestment (DRIP) compound?
Each year's dividends buy more shares, and next year those shares pay dividends too. The loop above: dividends = shares × dividend-per-share, then the cash buys shares at the year-end price. With a 4% yield and no growth at all, $10,000 becomes $10,816 in two years — exactly compound interest — and growth in the dividend or the price stacks on top of that.
What is dividend yield, and how does it relate to dividend per share?
Yield = annual dividend per share ÷ share price × 100. A $100 stock paying $4 a year yields 4%. The two fields above are linked both ways — type either and the other follows. Yield moves whenever the price does, which is why a suddenly high yield deserves a suspicious look rather than applause.
Why does the model use annual payments?
Deliberate v1 simplification, stated here rather than hidden: dividends compound once per year at the year-end price. Quarterly reinvestment compounds slightly faster (the difference over a decade is typically well under 1% of the final value), and a payment-frequency setting is a planned refinement. The projection is an illustration either way — real dividends get cut, raised, and skipped.
What do the growth fields assume?
Constant annual growth: the dividend per share and the share price each multiply by (1 + growth) every year, forever. No company grows on rails like that — the point of the table is to see what an assumption implies, not to predict. Set both growths to 0 for the pure-yield floor, or stress-test by cutting the dividend growth to zero halfway through your thinking.