What a dividend stock screener does
A dividend stock screener filters a universe of stocks down to the ones that meet your dividend rules, such as a minimum dividend yield, a maximum payout ratio, and a record of dividend payments. It saves you from checking each company by hand. A screener does not make a stock a good investment on its own: yield, payout, and valuation have to be read together, because a very high yield can signal a dividend cut ahead.
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In MarketXLS you can screen dividend stocks two ways: with the web stock screener, or in Excel by pulling dividend metrics into a list of tickers and filtering the columns.
Dividend yield
Dividend yield is annual dividends per share divided by the share price. It tells you how much cash income a stock pays relative to its price today. In Excel, =DividendYield("KO") returns the current yield and =DividendPerShare("KO") returns the dividend per share. A screener rule such as "yield above the S&P 500 yield" narrows the list to income stocks, but check each result: yield rises when a price falls, so a high yield after a sharp drop can reflect expected trouble rather than a better income opportunity.
Payout ratio
The payout ratio is the share of earnings paid out as dividends. =PayoutRatio("KO") returns it in Excel. A payout ratio far above 100% means the company pays more than it earns, which is hard to sustain. Many dividend screens combine a yield floor with a payout ceiling to filter out stretched payers. See the dividend payout ratio guide for how to read it.
Combining dividend screens with value criteria
Value investors add valuation rules to a dividend screen so they buy income stocks at a reasonable price. Typical additions are a price-to-earnings cap (=PERatio("KO")), a price-to-book cap, and a debt limit. Benjamin Graham's defensive investor rules, covered in The Defensive Investor (Utility) Strategy, are one published example of this approach.
Building a dividend screener in Excel with MarketXLS
MarketXLS is an Excel add-in (Windows desktop add-in, plus a Microsoft 365 add-in for Excel on Mac and the web) that returns dividend and fundamental data as worksheet functions. A basic dividend screener in Excel takes three steps:
- List your candidate tickers in column A.
- Add columns with
=DividendYield(A2),=PayoutRatio(A2),=DividendPerShare(A2), and=PERatio(A2). - Apply Excel filters, for example yield above 3% and payout ratio below 70%, and sort the result.
The thresholds above are examples, not recommendations. On the Microsoft 365 add-in, formulas use the mxls. prefix, for example =mxls.DividendYield("KO"). See pricing for plans.
This article is educational and is not investment advice.
Here are some templates that you can use to create your own models
Weiss Blue Chip Div Yield Screen
Neff Screen
Search for all templates on the MarketXLS templates page.
Relevant blogs that you can read to learn more about the topic
Exploring Top Blue Chip Dividend Stocks in 2021
Weiss Blue-Chip Dividend Yield Screen – Tracking And Implementation
Free Cash Flow Yield Screener S&P
The Defensive Investor (Utility) Strategy By Benjamin Graham
