Annual Dividend per Share ÷ Share Price = Dividend Yield

High yields tend to arrive with an asterisk.

The higher the number gets, the more tempting it looks.

And the more questions it tends to raise.

Because a yield can climb for two very different reasons: a company is returning a lot of cash to shareholders, or its stock price has fallen enough to make the percentage look unusually large.

Sometimes, it’s both.

So crossing the 6% mark is usually a good reason to look past the headline number.

Which brings us to four companies currently sitting on the other side of it.

A telecom giant. A tobacco company. And two of America’s largest energy infrastructure partnerships.

Each has something worth examining beneath that 6%+ yield:

Actual cash supporting the payout.

So, how much support is actually sitting underneath the 6%+ Club?

Let’s dig into it. ⇩

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$1 Out. $1.90 In.

First through the door: Enterprise Products Partners EPD ( ▼ 1.21% ) .

Its 6.19% yield is already enough to qualify for the club.

But the more interesting number sits underneath it.

In the second quarter, Enterprise generated $2.3 billion in distributable cash flow — essentially the cash available to pay unitholders after running the business.

→  It paid out $1.2 billion.

That works out to 1.9x distribution coverage.

Put simply, Enterprise generated nearly $1.90 for every $1 it distributed.

And it didn’t send the rest out the door.

→ Another $1.1 billion stayed behind for growth projects and buybacks.

The track record isn’t exactly new, either. Enterprise marked its 27th consecutive year of distribution growth in 2025, with its latest quarterly payout up 2.8% from a year earlier.

There is one wrinkle.

!!! Roughly $200 million of Q2’s benefit came from a temporary jump in global demand during April and May — something management says has since largely normalized.

Still, the basic math behind the payout is straightforward:

✱ 6.19% yield. Nearly 2x coverage. And cash left over after the checks go out.

The next member of the club pays even more — 7.64%.
But its cushion looks quite different.↓

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7.64%. And Still Growing…

Next up is MPLX MPLX ( ▼ 1.28% )— and this one comes with the biggest yield of the four.

→ 7.64%.

On an annualized distribution of $4.306 per unit, that’s already a sizable payout.

Management is also planning to make it bigger.

→ MPLX raised its distribution 12.5% in each of the past two years, and says it expects to grow it at that same rate again in 2026 and 2027.

That’s an unusually strong commitment for a payout already yielding north of 7%.

The cash underneath it provides some support.

→ MPLX generated $1.45 billion in distributable cash flow during Q2, and management is targeting distribution coverage of roughly 1.3x for 2026, 2027 and beyond.

Its quarterly distribution tells the growth story pretty neatly:

$0.705 → $0.775 → $0.85 → $0.9565 → $1.0765

But the bigger payout isn’t happening without some added weight.

→ Interest expense climbed from $229 million to $291 million in Q2 following acquisition-related debt, while leverage stands at 3.7x.

✱ That’s still below management’s 4.0x target, but it gives those future distribution increases another number to compete with.

MPLX has the biggest yield of the four.
The next name has something harder to replicate: 56 years of dividend history.↓

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60 Raises. 56 Years.

Then there’s Altria MO ( ▲ 1.26% ).

Its current yield sits at 6.59%, backed by one of the longest payout histories in the group.

✱ Altria has raised its dividend 60 times over the past 56 years.

The latest increase took the quarterly dividend from $1.06 to $1.11, bringing the annualized payout to $4.44 per share.

But Altria’s cushion looks different from the first two names.

→ In 2025, the company generated $9.07 billion in free cash flow and paid $6.96 billion in dividends.

That’s roughly 77% of free cash flow going out to shareholders.

Or, looked at another way, about 23% staying behind.

→ Management says the company typically has roughly $1 billion in excess cash left after paying the dividend, while debt-to-EBITDA sits around 1.9x.

There is a reason to watch that cushion closely.↓

!!! U.S. cigarette industry volumes fell an estimated 5% in Q2, while Marlboro’s overall retail share slipped 1.5 percentage points as some smokers moved toward discount brands.

So Altria’s 56-year record is impressive.

But maintaining it still comes down to the same thing as every other payout on this list:

The cash that comes in before the dividend goes out.

The final name has a shorter streak — but in Q2, less than half of its free cash flow went toward the dividend. ↓

Less Than Half…

Last up: Verizon VZ ( ▲ 0.03% ) .

Its 6.16% yield is the lowest of the four.

But in Q2, Verizon generated $6.43 billion in free cash flow and paid $2.954 billion in dividends.

That’s about 46%.

→ So for every $1 of free cash flow generated during the quarter, roughly 46 cents went toward the dividend.

The full-year picture is a little tighter.

In 2025, Verizon generated $20.13 billion in free cash flow against $11.48 billion in dividends — a payout ratio of roughly 57%.

And management expects more cash this year.

→ Verizon has raised its 2026 free cash flow guidance to $21.94 billion–$22.14 billion.

The business has also been improving underneath it.

Verizon added 184,000 postpaid phone customers in Q2, compared with a loss of 9,000 a year earlier, while its adjusted EBITDA margin expanded from 37.1% to 40.1%.

But there is a rather large number sitting on the other side of the ledger:

!!! $136.5 billion in unsecured debt.

Net unsecured leverage has risen to 2.5x, and Verizon is targeting 2.0x–2.25x during 2027.

So the dividend currently has plenty of cash behind it.

The balance sheet explains why keeping that cushion matters.

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