Which Companies Cut Their Dividends?

A dividend is a promise a company can choose to break. For an investor who counts on the income, a cut is the central risk, and it usually lands with the stock already falling. This page collects notable dividend cuts among large US companies over the past six years, each measured from one year's total per-share payout to the next. Stock splits lower a per-share dividend without cutting the income, so the names here are drawn from a set of major companies that did not split over the window.

The steepest cuts among big names

WITH annual AS (
    SELECT ticker, toYear(ex_dividend_date) AS y, round(sum(cash_amount),4) AS div
    FROM global_markets.stocks_dividends
    WHERE frequency IN (1,2,4,12) AND ex_dividend_date >= '2015-01-01' AND ex_dividend_date < toStartOfYear(today())
      AND ticker IN ('T','WFC','VFC','PARA','OXY','F','BA','KSS','GPS','M','NWL','DIS','INTC','WBA','SPG')
    GROUP BY ticker, y
),
f AS (SELECT ticker, y, div, lagInFrame(div) OVER w AS prev FROM annual WINDOW w AS (PARTITION BY ticker ORDER BY y ASC))
SELECT concat(ticker, ' ', toString(y)) AS cut, round(prev,2) AS before_cut, round(div,2) AS after_cut, round(100*(div/prev-1),1) AS pct_change
FROM f WHERE prev IS NOT NULL AND div < prev*0.85 AND div > 0 AND y >= toYear(today())-6
ORDER BY pct_change ASC LIMIT 14

At the top of the list, OXY 2021 fell -95.1%, from $0.82 a year to $0.04. Many of the deepest cuts share a single year, 2020: airlines, retailers, and energy producers pulled or slashed their payouts in the first months of the pandemic, when revenue fell away in a quarter. The more recent names on the list, at the shallower end, are company-specific rather than market-wide, a reminder that a cut is not only a crisis event.

The 2020 cluster reads like a map of the shutdown. Energy producers cut as oil briefly traded below zero, department stores and apparel sellers cut as malls closed, and travel and industrial names cut as orders stopped. A dividend is paid out of cash, and once the cash stopped arriving, the payout was among the first line items to go. The recovery that followed did not restore most of these dividends to where they had been; a cut is easy to make and slow to reverse.

Every figure is a per-share annual total. A dividend that halves is a real loss of income; a dividend that fell only on paper after a stock split is excluded here, which is why household names that split their shares are absent.

What a cut costs a holder

A cut lands twice. The income falls first, by exactly the percentage in the table, on a payment the holder had likely built into a budget. The stock price usually falls with it, and often ahead of it, as the market prices in the strain before the board acts. An investor holding for the yield can end up with less income and a lower share price at the same moment, the opposite of the steady compounding the position was bought for. Selling into that drop locks in the loss; holding means accepting a smaller check. Neither is the outcome the dividend was chosen for, which is why the durability of a payout matters as much as its size.

A blue chip that cut: AT&T

SELECT toString(toYear(ex_dividend_date)) AS year, round(sum(cash_amount),2) AS annual_dividend
FROM global_markets.stocks_dividends
WHERE ticker = 'T' AND frequency IN (1,2,4,12) AND ex_dividend_date BETWEEN '2018-01-01' AND toStartOfYear(today())
GROUP BY year ORDER BY year

AT&T held its annual payout near $2 for years, then reset it lower in 2022 alongside the spin-off of its media arm. The annual dividend settled at $1.11, roughly a third below where it had been. A payer of decades resized its dividend in a single step, and its yield had run high, a common warning, well before the cut arrived.

Reading a cut before it lands

A dividend under strain tends to leave marks. A yield far above a company's own history and its peers is one: the market marking the stock down faster than the company has marked the dividend down. A payout that consumes most or all of earnings, or exceeds free cash flow, is another, since the gap has to close from somewhere. A stock in a sustained decline is a third, as the cut and the price often move together.

The opposite signal is a long, unbroken record of raises. The companies with two decades of rising dividends are the ones that treated the payout as close to untouchable through recessions and shocks. A cut and a multi-decade growth streak sit at the two ends of dividend safety, and the data on this page is one end of it.

FAQ

Which big companies have cut their dividends recently?

Over the past six years, notable cuts among major US names include the 2020 pandemic wave (energy, airlines, and retailers) and later company-specific cuts. The steepest in this set was OXY 2021, down -95.1%. AT&T reset its dividend about a third lower in 2022.

Why do companies cut dividends?

A cut frees cash when earnings or cash flow no longer cover the payout, when debt needs paying down, or when a company reshapes itself through a spin-off or restructuring. The common thread is that the dividend was consuming cash the company decided it needed elsewhere.

How can I tell if a dividend is at risk?

Warning signs include a yield well above the stock's own history, a payout ratio near or above 100% of earnings or free cash flow, and a falling share price. None guarantees a cut, and together they raise the odds.

Do stock splits count as dividend cuts?

No. A split lowers the per-share dividend and the share price by the same ratio, so the income and the yield are unchanged. This page excludes split-driven drops and the names that split over the window.

Every number here comes from the stored query beneath it. Expand any panel to audit the payout history, or measure a holding's dividend record yourself on the Strasmore terminal. For the other end of the spectrum, see two decades of rising dividends; to weigh a dividend against a risk-free alternative, see dividend yield versus Treasury yield.