- Pays: quarterly — usually going ex-dividend in March, June, September, and December.
- Paying since: our chart starts in 1970, but Coca-Cola has paid dividends since 1920 and raised them every year for over six decades — the definition of a Dividend King.
- The compounding exhibit: split-adjusted, KO paid about a penny per share in 1970 and $2.04 in 2025 — the same share's payout grew roughly 200-fold.
- The famous fan: Warren Buffett's KO shares, bought in the late 1980s, now pay him back more than half their original cost every year — the textbook yield-on-cost story.
- Today's yield: modest (~2-3%) — you're buying the raise streak and the durability, not a big current check.
Figures are split-adjusted from our data feed and may book an occasional payment into an adjacent year; Coca-Cola's official raise streak is unbroken for 60+ years.
KO pays quarterly. Each point below is one dividend since 1970 — a fifty-year staircase that never stops climbing.
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Each point is one payment; the line ends at the most recent payout. The table below totals them by year.
| Recent Ex-Dividend Dates | Dividend / Share |
|---|
"Next expected" is estimated from KO's recent payment rhythm — the fund announces exact dates shortly before each payout, and the data feed can lag a few days. You must own shares before the ex-dividend date to receive that payout; the cash typically arrives days later. See every fund's upcoming date on the live dividend calendar.
A real total-return estimate, assuming every payout was reinvested — including what happened to the share price. Before taxes and fees. Past performance does not predict the future.
Now Estimate Your Own Future
These are assumptions, not a prediction. Want the full chart and tax options? Open the full calculator →
The chart above is what every dividend investor is ultimately chasing: a payout that has risen through a dozen recessions, oil shocks, a pandemic, and every fad in market history. Coca-Cola can do this because its product costs pennies to make, sells in every country on earth, and has pricing power measured in decades. The current yield always looks unimpressive — it looked unimpressive in 1988 when Buffett bought, too. The raise streak is the product.
The honest trade-off: growth this durable is never cheap, and KO's payout ratio runs high enough that the raises come in pennies, not leaps. This is a hold-for-decades machine — model what that patience earns with the estimator below, and see the concept explained in our compounding guide.
| Year | Total Dividends / Share | Payments | Change vs Prior Year |
|---|
Data source: Yahoo Finance. Figures are per share; the current year may be partial and figures should be verified against official sources.
Calculated from complete calendar years in the data above. Past results don't guarantee future payments.
When Is KO's Next Ex-Dividend Date?
KO pays quarterly — usually going ex-dividend in March, June, September, and December. The exact date of each payout is announced by the fund only shortly beforehand, so no site can promise the next date — but the live schedule box above shows the most recent ex-dividend date and the expected window for the next one, computed from KO's actual payment rhythm. Remember: you must own shares before the ex-dividend date to receive that payout.
Fifty-Six Years on One Chart
Our data starts in 1970, when a split-adjusted share of Coca-Cola paid about one cent per year. In 2025 that same share paid $2.04. Nothing else on this site — no triple-digit yield, no weekly payer — demonstrates what dividend investing is actually about as clearly as that 200-fold staircase: a modest check that never stops growing eventually embarrasses every big check that does.
The Buffett Math
Warren Buffett's Berkshire bought its KO stake between 1988 and 1994 for roughly $1.3 billion. Today the position pays Berkshire more than $800 million a year — over 60% of the original cost, every year, growing. That's yield on cost: the current yield you lock in by buying a grower and waiting. Our dividend calculator computes it for any inputs — it's the number KO holders actually care about, and the reason they shrug at the modest headline yield.
Where KO Fits
KO is a cornerstone holding for raise-streak investors — the single-stock version of what SCHD does with a hundred names. It won't excite anyone in a given year; that's the feature. Pair it against the high-yield aisle on this site and you have the entire spectrum of dividend investing on one screen. Next expected date, as always, on the live calendar.
How to Choose Dividend Stocks
Raise streaks, payout ratios, yield traps — the plain-English framework for telling durable payers from pretenders.
Read: How to Choose Dividend Stocks