A few weeks ago I wrote about Europe’s highest dividend payers, the companies sharing the top Dividend Yield rank at Obermatt: Renault, TORM, Logista, and Pennon among them. The pattern held up well once you looked past the headline number. This time around, I had a look at the US and Canada, and the businesses that turned up are a different mix: a coal producer, a parcel courier, a remittance company quietly pivoting into stablecoins, and a Quebec printer that just handed shareholders a payout worth more than a year of its regular dividend.
At the Jackson Hole Symposium, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh used his keynote to insist that inflation is not slowing enough and that the Fed has "work to do" if that does not change. It is a factor the Europe piece did not have to consider. Long-term borrowing costs made the same point earlier: the 30-year Treasury touched 5.31% on August 17, its highest since 2007 and high enough that the US Treasury stepped into the bond market to try to cap it. That matters. When a 30-year government bond pays over 5% with essentially no credit risk, a dividend stock yielding 2.5 or 3% is a harder sell than it would have been a year ago.
As with the Europe list, Obermatt’s Dividend Yield rank is relative to sector peers, not an absolute number. A rank of 100 means a company’s yield sits at the top of its peer group, which does not always mean the yield itself is high in cash terms. Two names that cleared the rank of 100 screen did not make it onto this list, for exactly that reason. Canfor, the Canadian lumber producer, currently pays no dividend at all. Regeneron’s newly initiated payout works out to under 0.5%. Both show how thin dividends run across their entire peer groups rather than a genuine income opportunity. The nine companies below are the ones where the yield itself, not just the peer comparison, holds up.
Here they are, with their current ranks alongside the dividend picture.
Name | Dividend Yield | 360° View | Sentiment | Combined | Value | Growth | Safety |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Large • Coal & Consumable Fuels | 100 | 98 | 79 | 98 | 92 | 63 | 82 |
2. XX-Large • Pharmaceuticals | 100 | 66 | 15 | 91 | 98 | 53 | 68 |
3. XX-Large • Air Freight & Logistics | 100 | 23 | 21 | 41 | 68 | 37 | 36 |
4. Large • Transaction & Payment Processing Services | 100 | 65 | 19 | 91 | 100 | 35 | 57 |
5. X-Large • Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals | 100 | 21 | 15 | 37 | 82 | 47 | 8 |
6. Medium • Commodity Chemicals | 100 | 59 | 51 | 70 | 95 | 79 | 6 |
7. X-Large • Industrial Machinery & Supplies | 100 | 65 | 53 | 72 | 94 | 57 | 33 |
8. Large • Paper Packaging | 100 | 54 | 13 | 83 | 100 | 19 | 80 |
9. XX-Large • Biotechnology | 100 | 31 | 27 | 55 | 51 | 82 | 23 |
Strong Across the Board
Alliance Resource Partners, the Illinois Basin coal producer, is the strongest all-round name on this list: a Combined rank of 98, a Value rank of 92, and a Safety rank of 82, unusually high for a fossil fuel producer. Its Sentiment rank of 79 backs that up, rare for coal in 2026. The distribution runs close to 10%, and while the trailing payout ratio looks stretched on an earnings basis, cash flow coverage is comfortable, helped by a growing oil and gas royalty business alongside the coal. It is the one high yield here that sits on top of a genuinely strong business instead of standing in for one.
Reward or Red Flag
These stocks pay real, high, single or double digit yields, but each requires a closer look.
Pfizer has made its 351st consecutive quarterly dividend payment, a streak that now stretches back decades, and the yield sits above 6%. The catch is the payout ratio, over 220% of earnings, meaning Pfizer is currently paying out more than twice what it makes. The company has said maintaining and eventually growing the dividend remains a priority, but a Sentiment rank of just 15 shows the market is not yet convinced the business is growing fast enough to back that up.
UPS yields a similar 6%, and the reason is less flattering. The yield is roughly 90% above its ten-year median, which is not because the dividend jumped, it is because the share price has not recovered from a stretch of soft parcel volumes and margin pressure. A Safety rank of 36 and a Sentiment rank of 21 point at the same underlying problem.
Western Union is the extreme case, yielding somewhere between 11% and 13% on a share price that has fallen for years, as digital alternatives eat into traditional remittances. A Value rank of 100 looks tempting next to that yield, but a Sentiment rank of just 19 is the market’s view of the underlying business. One point worth noting is that the company just launched Stablecard, a stablecoin-linked card built with the fintech Rain, which happens to sit squarely inside this year’s Jackson Hole theme of financial innovation in payments. Whether that turns into something that changes the growth picture, or stays a side project, is the real question behind the yield.
When the Balance Sheet Tells a Different Story
Two names here look attractive on the dividend metrics alone and considerably less attractive once you check what is underneath.
HP Inc has raised its dividend for 16 straight years, yields around 5%, and covers that payout with less than half of its earnings, a payout ratio that would normally read as conservative. Its Safety rank, however, is just 8, the lowest of any company on this list. The gap is the balance sheet: HP currently carries negative shareholder equity, a debt load that a healthy income statement does not fully offset. That is a more pressing concern with long-term borrowing costs sitting near an 18-year high than it would have been a year ago.
Chemtrade Logistics, the Canadian industrial chemicals income fund, pays a solid 5% yield in monthly installments, well covered by earnings on paper. Its Safety rank of 6 flags the same underlying issue as HP: independent analysis of the balance sheet describes the fund as using debt extensively. Coverage ratios that look fine in isolation are worth less if refinancing that debt gets more expensive from here.
Twenty-Five Years Without a Cut
Stanley Black & Decker is the name on this list that reads most like a plain, ordinary dividend stock: a yield in the 3.5 to 4% range, a quarterly payment that has just ticked up again, and a record of 25 straight years without a cut. Nothing about it is dramatic, which, given the rest of this list, is worth something on its own.
A One-Off, Not a Pattern
Transcontinental, the Quebec printing and packaging group, is this list’s version of the TORM story from the Europe piece, a real payout driven by a one-off event rather than ordinary operations. In March, the company distributed $20 per share in a special payment split between a return of capital and a dividend, which is why some yield calculators currently show numbers as high as 20% for the stock. The regular, forward-looking yield is closer to 3.7%. A Growth rank of just 19 and a Sentiment rank of 13, the weakest on this list, suggest the market has already moved past the special payment and is not especially excited about what comes next.
Above Average, Not Exceptional
AbbVie rounds out the list at a yield of roughly 2.7%, comfortably above the broad market average but well short of the double-digit names above it. The payout ratio is high, over 275% of earnings, though a Growth rank of 82 suggests the newer parts of the business are replacing the revenue lost to Humira’s patent expiry faster than that headline number implies. It is a moderate yield attached to a company still working through that transition. Against a 30-year Treasury paying over 5%, a yield this size needs the underlying business to keep growing to justify holding the stock over the bond. Right now, the ranks suggest it can.
Find These Yourself
Back in June, when I wrote about Europe’s dividend payers, the Stock Filter and Watchlists already existed, but filtering directly by a rank like Dividend Yield wasn’t one of the options yet, so that list still had to be built by hand. That option is there now. Unlimited subscribers can filter the roughly 8’500 stocks in the database by Dividend Yield or any other rank directly, and track the names that matter to them without waiting for the next blog post.
See how the plans compare, including a 30-day free trial, at obermatt.com/pricing. Every Obermatt subscription comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.