This Dividend King’s Stock Just Soared to a 6-Year High

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 31, 9:15AM EDT

Wall St. Key Points:

Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO) stock hit a six-year high because its earnings were strong.
This Dividend King also has among the highest yields of S&P 500 stocks.

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This Dividend King’s Stock Just Soared to a 6-Year High — © krblokhin / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

Tobacco company and Dividend King Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO | MO Price Prediction) has a 6.6% yield, among the highest of S&P 500 stocks. Its shares recently hit a six-year high, which is rare among corporations with big payouts. A day ago, its stock rose 4.8% to $62.61 a share. It has not traded there since November 2018.

Altria stock rose because its earnings were strong for its most recent quarter and handily beat Wall Street estimates. Its relatively new tobacco pouch products did well enough to mostly offset a drop in its legacy cigarette business.

The increase in the stock was unusual, based on what drives most stock prices higher. Revenue fell 2% to $6.1 billion. However, adjusted diluted earnings per share rose 8% to $1.44. Perhaps most importantly, Altria said its forecast for future earnings improved: “We are raising the lower-end of our 2025 full-year guidance and now expect to deliver adjusted diluted EPS in a range of $5.35 to $5.45. This range represents a growth rate of 3.0% to 5.0% from a base of $5.19 in 2024.”

Altria’s earnings continue to be driven by the Marlboro brand, which accounts for 90% of its cigarette sales. Its oral tobacco product sales are dominated by Copenhagen, which makes up 48% of the division’s revenue.

Altria also said it had distributed $32 billion in dividends to shareholders between 2020 and 2024. Altria has paid a dividend for six decades and has increased that dividend 56 years in a row.

Altria changed its name from Philip Morris in 2003. It owned a majority stake in Kraft Foods until 2008. There is a theory that Altria wanted to disguise the fact that it was a tobacco company, and thus the name change. Tobacco is the number one cause of preventable death in the United States and kills approximately 480,000 Americans per year, according to the American Lung Association.

Altria investors have decided to look the other way in terms of its products. In exchange, they get a 6.6% payout.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.