Have high-dividend companies given up on growth: dividends and growth across major stocks

A company that pays generous dividends is easily taken for “a mature company whose growth has stopped and that hands out the profit left over.” The common belief is that a growing company is too busy reinvesting its profit to have room for dividends.

That is half right. Some growth companies do pay no dividend so they can reinvest their profit, and mature companies with steady earnings tend to pay more generous dividends. But how strong this tendency is, and whether dividends and growth really trade off against each other, can only be known by counting.

Jupick set dividend yield and revenue growth side by side on its watchlist as of September 22, 2026.

Only stocks with both metrics actually measured were counted. Values filled with the neutral fill-in value because the data source gave none are not measurements, so they were left out, and of the 335 stocks that remained, 307 paid a dividend (a dividend yield above 0).

These 307 dividend stocks were lined up from the highest dividend yield down, and the top quarter (a dividend yield of 2.8% or more, 76 stocks) was taken as the high-dividend group. If the common belief holds, this group ought to show noticeably lower growth.

The median revenue growth of the top quarter by dividend yield was 5.3%. On the low-dividend side (154 stocks with a dividend yield at or below the median of 1.56%), median growth was 11.0%, about twice as high.

So on average, companies paying more in dividends grew more slowly than those paying less. The direction the common belief points to was there in the data too. A weak tradeoff did exist between dividends and growth.

The direction was right, but the relationship was weak. Across the 307 dividend stocks, the correlation coefficient between dividend yield and revenue growth was -0.083, very close to 0. That means dividend yield alone gives little basis for guessing a company's growth rate.

What stands out more is this: 82% of the 76 stocks in the top quarter by dividend yield were still growing. Companies with negative revenue growth, the ones really going backward, were a minority. Paying large dividends did not mean growth had stopped.

There were clearly companies with both high dividends and high growth. In the top quarter by dividend yield, 19 stocks had revenue growth above 10%. In other words, within this watchlist alone, nineteen companies had a dividend yield above 3% while growing sales at double digits.

This does not mean those nineteen are especially good stocks. It does show that the flat claim “high dividends mean no growth” is not a rule that holds without exception. Dividends and growth were not a relationship in which one has to be given up to get the other.

Whether to pay a dividend is a company's policy on how to use its profit, not the opposite of its ability to grow. Even in mature industries some companies grow by gaining market share, and some companies return part of their profit as dividends while they grow.

So dividend yield alone cannot tell whether a company is growing or has stopped. There is a weak tendency, but individual companies can stray far from it. This is also why the payout ratio and the earnings trend need to be read alongside the dividend.

What these numbers say is this: there is a weak tradeoff between dividends and growth, but the relationship is not strong enough to conclude that “a high dividend means growth has been given up.” Most dividend stocks are growing, and some have both.

What they do not say is just as clear. This measurement says nothing about which dividend stocks go up or down or what to invest in. Nor does it mean high dividends are good or growth stocks are better. It only counts how the two numbers sat on this watchlist.

The figures cited were measured on September 22, 2026 and change with updates. This content is for information only and is not investment advice. Jupick does not forecast future share prices and does not suggest any trade. Investment decisions and responsibility for them rest with the user.