Welltower Inc. WELL recently announced that it expects to raise its quarterly common stock dividend by 15% from the previous quarterly payout of 74 cents per share to 85 cents per share. This hike indicates its ability to generate strong cash flow through its operating portfolio.
Per Shankh Mitra, CEO of Welltower, “This action not only reflects the company's low dividend payout ratio driven by strong cash flow per share growth in recent years, but also the Board's confidence regarding outsized levels of growth in the coming years supported by extraordinary balance sheet strength."
Previously, on April 28, 2026, the Board of Directors declared a cash dividend for the first quarter of 2026 of 74 cents per share. This dividend was paid on May 21, 2026, to stockholders of record as of May 13, 2026. It was its 220th consecutive quarterly cash dividend.
Management also noted that the company continues to retain significant free cash flow and maintain extraordinarily low leverage metrics, providing it with ample capacity and flexibility to support robust, visible, and actionable organic and inorganic growth opportunities across the United States, the U.K. and Canada.
Solid dividend payouts remain the biggest attractions for real estate investment trust (REIT) investors, and WELL has remained committed to that. The company has increased its dividend two twice in the last five years, and its five-year annualized dividend growth rate is 4.18%. Check out Welltower’s dividend history here.
In the past three months, shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have declined 5.7% compared with the industry's fall of 0.4%.
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Stocks to Consider
Some better-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector are Outfront Media OUT and Lamar Advertising LAMR, each carrying a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for OUT’s 2026 FFO per share is pegged at $2.24, which indicates year-over-year growth of 12.56%.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for LAMR’s full-year FFO per share is pinned at $8.81, which suggests an increase of 6.66% from the year-ago period.
Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).