Ready for the inaugurations? Yes, with a plural. We are talking seven brand-new dividend programs today.
Dividend payers are our beat here at Contrarian Outlook. And we welcome newcomers because they can really kick off a phenomenon I refer to as the Dividend Magnet.
Over long time frames—years—stock prices follow their payout higher. We like dividend growers because they are the surest, safest way to profits in the stock market. Buy a rising payout, sit back, and watch the stock price chase it.
New dividend payers can be even better because they tend to grow their dividends quickly. New divvie payers know that they can make new payments comfortably and that they have plenty of dry powder for future increases.
Wall Street is increasingly seeing the world the same way we do. A new dividend used to be treated like “the end of growth.” But more and more, investors realize exactly what a new dividend means, and they celebrate it. Just look at what happened to Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META) after it announced in February 2024 it would start paying its shareholders:
The Start of a Killer Year for META
So, what fresh dividends should we have our eyes on? Let’s take a look at a handful of dividend initiations announced over the past six months, including a few distributions that will debut in January 2025. These dividends pay up to 8%+.
LandBridge (LB)
Dividend Initiation Announcement: Nov. 6, 2024
First Dividend Payment: Dec. 19, 2024
Dividend Amount: $0.10 (Quarterly)
Dividend Yield: 0.5%
LandBridge (LB) is a land management company that owns surface acres in Texas and New Mexico, primarily in the Permian Basin. It generates revenues from surface use royalties, sales of resources such as brackish water and other surface composite materials, and oil and gas royalties. It went public in 2024 at $17 per share, and it has already more than quadrupled. It also announced its first dividend—a 10-cent-per-share quarterly distribution, first paid in December 2024.
CGI Inc. (GIB)
Dividend Initiation Announcement: July 31, 2024
First Dividend Payment: Dec. 20, 2024
Dividend Amount: $0.15 (Quarterly)
Dividend Yield: 0.6%
CGI Inc. (GIB) is an IT and business process services provider. CGI has spent decades on public markets, and while its shorter-term growth isn’t nearly as explosive as LandBridge’s, it has more than tripled the index over the past 20 years. CGI has long poured its cash back into the business and on the occasional repurchase. However, CGI announced in late July that it would be paying a dividend for the first time, which it did in December 2024—a 15-cent quarterly dole.
Marex Group (MRX)
Dividend Initiation Announcement: Aug. 14, 2024
First Dividend Payment: Sept. 16, 2024
Dividend Amount: $0.14 (Quarterly)
Dividend Yield: 1.7%
U.K.-based Marex Group (MRX) provides liquidity, market access, and infrastructure services to clients in financial, energy and commodities markets. These services include clearing, agency and execution, market making, hedging, and other investment solutions.
It was founded roughly 20 years ago but only joined the public markets in April 2024. A private equity consortium still owns roughly two-thirds of the company, though it’s possible they will sell off some of that ownership stake over the next few years.
Net interest income (NII) has gone from losses in 2019 through 2021 to $29 million in 2022 and nearly $122 million in 2023. Net income has gone up by nearly 300% in that time. Part of that has come from organic share gains in its core markets, but Marex isn’t shy about growing through acquisitions, including Middle Eastern brokerage firm Aarna Capital and Spanish biofuels company Dropet in 2024.
So far, investors like what they’ve seen, driving shares 70% higher in less than a year. And virtually all of that has come following the announcement that Marex would start distributing cash to its shareholders.
A Little Cash Makes a Big Statement
While many European companies pay semiannual dividends, Dropet’s August initiation announcement was for the start of a quarterly payout—a decent 14 cents quarterly that translates to 1.7%. If MRX follows through in the next few years, it could keep up a different European tradition: yielding far more than comparable American companies.
Alight (ALIT)
Dividend Initiation Announcement: Nov. 12, 2024
First Dividend Payment: Dec. 16, 2024
Dividend Amount: $0.04 (Quarterly)
Dividend Yield: 2.4%
Alight (ALIT) provides a variety of cloud-based benefits and business solutions. The benefits side includes administration, healthcare navigation, financial wellbeing, payroll and more, and it does much of this through the online benefits portal Alight Worklife. Meanwhile, the professional segment offers cloud advisory, deployment, and optimization services.
Alight is a relatively new publicly traded stock that hit the New York Stock Exchange in 2021 via a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). But it hasn’t enjoyed quite the same return as the previous stocks, losing a quarter of its value over the past few years. That’s largely because, while the top line has grown steadily and consistently for years even predating its SPAC listing, Alight hasn’t put up a GAAP profit since 2019, and 2023’s $345 million loss was worse than its prior three years combined.
It was a bit of a surprise, then, when ALIT announced in November 2024 that it would start paying a 4-cent quarterly dividend. I say “a bit” because, though it has posted numerous years’ worth of GAAP losses, Alight is profitable on an adjusted basis, and it generates strong cash flows. Also encouraging is that recurring revenues account for roughly 90% of sales, and Alight spends its cash prudently, halving its debt in just five years.
Match Group (MTCH)
Dividend Initiation Announcement: Dec. 11, 2024
First Dividend Payment: Jan. 21, 2025
Dividend Amount: $0.19 (Quarterly)
Dividend Yield: 2.4%
Match Group (MTCH) is easily the best-known name on this list, albeit through its brands, which include Hinge, Match, Meetic, OkCupid, Pairs, Plenty Of Fish and, of course, Tinder—the most downloaded dating app and the highest grossing lifestyle app overall worldwide. Across its various properties, MTCH claims 15.2 million paying customers covering 40 languages.
I don’t know that I’ve seen a bigger, ahem, mismatch than MTCH’s stock performance and its operational performance:
Market Treats Match Like a Scorned Ex
That’s not to say Match Group doesn’t have some problems on its hands. Revenue growth has slowed, in large part thanks to a two-year pullback in Tinder revenues. The company’s recent outlook for Tinder disappointed. But MTCH is seeing success with Hinge, as well as growth in Asia thanks to Pair and Azar.
For now, Match Group is hoping to appease shareholders by throwing wads of cash at them. The company expects to return virtually all of its free cash flow to shareholders over the next few years, via both a $1.5 billion share repurchase authorization and a new quarterly dividend of 19 cents per share.
OneSpan (OSPN)
Dividend Initiation Announcement: Dec. 16, 2024
First Dividend Payment: Feb. 14, 2024
Dividend Amount: $0.12 (Quarterly)
Dividend Yield: 2.5%
OneSpan (OSPN) is another new dividend payer from the technology sector, this one a cybersecurity company whose core focus rests on identification. Specifically, it offers products such as a cloud-based multifactor authentication solution (including biometrics, push notification, and visual cryptograms); a platform that allows banks and financial institutions to provide identity verification services; a mobile transaction protection development kit; and more.
OneSpan is an extraordinarily fickle stock, peaking and burning out several times across more than two decades of trade. Naturally, then, one has to look at its current run—80% gains in a year—with a grain of salt.
But perhaps that’s what OneSpan’s new dividend is meant to get under control.
In mid-December, OneSpan announced it would start paying a 12-cent quarterly dividend as of Feb. 14, 2025. At today’s prices, that comes out to a 2.5% yield, which is pretty decent for a first-time tech payout. More importantly, the company’s language indicates that it’s keenly aware of the need to provide shareholder returns, saying they’ll consider a “range of options with additional capital allocation,” including share repurchases, special dividends and increases to the quarterly dividend, among others.
South Bow (SOBO)
Dividend Initiation Announcement: Oct. 1, 2024
First Dividend Payment: Jan. 31, 2025
Dividend Amount: $0.50 (Quarterly)
Dividend Yield: 8.5%
South Bow (SOBO) is typical of a new dividend payer in that it’s a spinoff. Specifically, this liquid pipelines business was spun off of Canadian energy infrastructure firm TC Energy (TRP).
South Bow, whose name reflects its origins near Canada’s South Bow River, boasts more than 3,000 miles of oil and liquids pipeline infrastructure (most notably the Keystone Pipeline System) connecting Alberta crude oil supplies to U.S. refining markets in Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas, and the U.S. Gulf Coast. The company also owns storage terminals in the U.S. and Canada.
Energy infrastructure stocks tend to be generous dividend payers, and South Bow is no exception. SOBO came out swinging at the bell—in the same release announcing its launch as an independent company, it also said it expected to declare its first dividend a month later (which it did). The company’s 50-cent quarterly dividend comes out to a yield north of 8%.
For obvious reasons, there’s little price history here to study.
And What Is There Doesn’t Tell Us Much
But as is typical of an MLP, a high amount of its profits are contracted—in South Bow’s case, roughly 88% of comparable EBITDA, at an average remaining contract term of 8.3 years. In other words: Management doesn’t appear to be overreaching with its strong opening distribution.
My 2025 Dividend Plan: Buy the Best Yields of 2035!
I’m going to be laser-focused on stocks like these all year long.
That’s because my 2025 investment plan is to buy “Dividend Magnets”—stocks that boast some of Wall Street’s fastest-growing payouts, which in turn attract more investors and “pull” prices higher, providing us with the potential for a wicked 1-2 punch of total returns.
Some of these stocks are in Wall Street’s far-flung corners, and a few of them are hiding in plain sight. In fact, one of my favorite Dividend Magnets is a blue-chip Dow component!
I’m currently zeroed in on 5 stocks I see as the next Dividend Magnet winners. They’re my top picks for the fastest-growing payouts—and share prices—through 2025 and beyond.
And I’m going to share them with you right now. Simply click here and I’ll tell you more about these 5 “Dividend Magnet” winners — including a Dow blue-chip — and give you access to a free Special Report revealing their names and tickers.