Dividend Dispatch — Header
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| Dividend Dispatch |
| Income is everywhere. I find it. |
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| WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 2026·6 min read |
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Dividend Dispatch — Today's Theme
| Today's Theme |
| Caesars Palace, a portfolio of 35 drug royalties, and two 9%+ income engines |
| Yesterday's reopen produced fresh record closes — the S&P 500 at 7,519.12, Nasdaq at 26,656.18, the Russell 2000 above 2,900 for the first time ever. Micron jumped 19% and crossed $1 trillion in market cap. Oil dropped another 4.7% to $93 as Iran talks kept "proceeding nicely." The 10-year Treasury sits at 4.56%. Today's picks lean into the unusual. Two Weird Yield names where the source of the dividend is — at least to me — fun: VICI Properties, which owns Caesars Palace, the MGM Grand and the Venetian and collects rent on all of them, and Royalty Pharma, which collects checks on 35+ blockbuster drugs including Mounjaro royalties. Then two High Yield ideas — PFFA at 9.5% on a basket of preferred stocks, and Ellington Financial, whose Q1 dividend coverage came in at 141%. |
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One Filing Just Changed The SpaceX IPO Forever |
SpaceX filed its S-1. |
June 12 is now confirmed. $75 billion. Ticker SPCX. The largest IPO in history. |
You will not get shares. The 21-bank syndicate already locked them up. |
But the S-1 just exposed the one company Musk cannot operate without. |
It's publicly traded. It's still cheap. And in 22 days, the whole world will know its name. |
Dylan Jovine is giving it away — free — before the window closes. |
Get the ticker before June 12 reprices everything |
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Dividend Dispatch — Main Post
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The Weird Yield
Income from places you'd never expect
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| VICIVICI Properties — Caesars Palace, MGM Grand, and the Venetian pay you 6.2% |
Next time you walk past Caesars Palace on the Vegas Strip, know that the real estate underneath it isn't owned by Caesars Entertainment. It's owned by VICI Properties — a real estate investment trust that VICI carved out from Caesars in 2017. Same with the MGM Grand and the Venetian Resort. Three of the most iconic casino properties on Earth and VICI is the landlord, collecting rent on triple-net leases that run 40+ years.
The portfolio is 54 gaming properties plus 39 non-gaming experiential assets (bowling centers, golf courses, etc.) — 93 properties in all across the U.S. and Canada. Q1 2026 revenue was $1.0 billion, up 3.5% year-over-year. Occupancy is 100%. AFFO per share grew 4.5%. The biggest tenants — Caesars and MGM — generate more than 70% of revenue under master leases that bundle multiple properties together.
The quarterly dividend is $0.45 per share. Annualized $1.80. On a $28.86 stock, yield is 6.24%, so $10,000 = $625 a year, paid quarterly. VICI has raised the dividend every year since going public in 2017. Net margin is 71.2% — the casino industry might be volatile but the rent isn't. The house's landlord always wins.
Risk to know: tenant concentration is real. If Caesars or MGM faced serious financial stress, VICI's biggest revenue lines would feel it. Vegas tourism has been resilient, but a deep U.S. recession would test the model. The 40-year triple-net leases mean tenants — not VICI — pay property taxes, insurance, and maintenance. That insulates VICI from cost inflation. The dividend looks safe. AFFO covers it comfortably. |
| Yield: 6.24% |
$10K invested = $625/yr |
Paid: Quarterly |
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| RPRXRoyalty Pharma — they collect royalties on Vertex, J&J and GSK drugs you've heard of |
This one is my favorite kind of business. Royalty Pharma is essentially a publicly traded version of a music royalty company — except instead of owning rights to songs, they own rights to drug royalty streams. The portfolio holds royalties on more than 35 commercial drugs from Vertex (cystic fibrosis), Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Roche, and dozens of others — plus interests in 20 development-stage candidates.
Here's how it works. When biopharma companies need cash to fund late-stage trials, they sell future royalty rights on their drugs to Royalty Pharma. RPRX writes a big check upfront and then collects a percentage of every sale of that drug, often for 15-20 years. Their portfolio includes royalties from the Vertex cystic fibrosis franchise, which generates billions a year, plus newer additions — in April they acquired royalty rights on AMVUTTRA from Blackstone Life Sciences for $310 million and royalty rights on two cancer therapies from Nuvalent for up to $315 million, with royalties extending to 2041-2042.
The dividend is quarterly $0.235, annualized $0.94. Yield about 1.9% on a $50 stock, so $10,000 = $190 a year. RPRX has raised the dividend every year since going public in 2020 — six straight years. Q1 2026 results beat: EPS $1.30 vs $1.22 expected, revenue $925 million up 5% from the forecast. Payout ratio is just 46.7%. The structure is also tax-efficient under U.K. tax rules — RPRX is incorporated as a U.K. PLC.
Risk to know: drug patents expire. The 2030s will bring patent cliffs on some of their top-grossing royalty streams. Management's job is to replace those streams faster than they erode — which is why you see acquisitions at the pace they're doing them. Drug pricing reform is the other long-term variable. The dividend is well-covered today. The future depends on the pace of new royalty acquisitions. |
| Yield: 1.9% |
$10K invested = $190/yr |
Paid: Quarterly |
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The High Yield
Today's best dividend income ideas — 8%+ yields only
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| PFFAPFFA — 9.5% monthly from preferred stocks, the income workhorse most retail ignores |
Preferred stocks are one of the most under-appreciated income vehicles in the U.S. market. They sit between bonds and common stock — they pay a fixed dividend like a bond but trade like a stock — and they're typically issued by REITs, banks, pipelines, and utilities. The Virtus InfraCap U.S. Preferred Stock ETF (ticker PFFA) is actively managed, holds preferred shares from across that universe, and uses modest borrowing to boost the yield.
Yield at the recent $21.81 price is 9.5%. The fund pays monthly. Annual distribution is $2.07. $10,000 invested = $950 a year — about $79 a month. AUM is $2.35 billion. The expense ratio is 2.48%, which sounds high until you understand the math: about half of that is the cost of the borrowing the fund uses to amplify yields.
Why I like this in this particular environment: preferred prices got hit hard when long rates spiked. Now that the 10-year has settled back to 4.56%, preferred prices have stabilized. 1-year total return is 16.2%. The portfolio is heavily concentrated in real estate, financial, and energy preferreds.
Risk to know: this fund borrows to amplify its yield, so the math cuts both ways. If long rates spike again like they did the week of May 19 — when the 30-year touched 5.198% — PFFA will draw down meaningfully. The cost of that borrowing also rises if short rates surprise to the upside. The income stream itself has been stable; the share price has not. Buy this for the check, not the chart. |
| Yield: 9.5% |
$10K invested = $950/yr |
Paid: Monthly |
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| EFCEllington Financial — Q1 earnings just covered the dividend at 141%, monthly 11.5% |
Three weeks ago I'd have hesitated to write up Ellington Financial. The history has cuts in it — they reduced the monthly from $0.15 to $0.13 in late 2023. But Q1 2026 results landed May 5 and they were strong. Adjusted distributable earnings came in at $0.55 per share against a quarterly dividend of $0.39 ($0.13 × 3 months). That's 141% coverage. Management raised their full-year ADE guidance to around $0.45 per quarter, still well above the payout.
The business is unusual for an mREIT. EFC originates non-QM loans (lending to borrowers who don't fit Fannie/Freddie boxes), runs a reverse mortgage origination business called Longbridge, and securitizes its own loans. Longbridge alone hit $550 million in originations in Q1, up 52% year-over-year. Monthly dividend is $0.13, annual $1.56. Yield 11.5% on a $13.56 stock — book value per share rose to $13.56 in Q1, so you're buying roughly at book. $10,000 = $1,150 a year, about $96 a month.
Risk to know: EFC cut the monthly twice in the past — once during COVID, once in late 2023 to "build equity value." The Sure Dividend forecast model expects a 98% payout ratio for 2026 — tighter than I'd like. The Q1 result was a step up. I want to see Q2 confirm before I'd add. For now, the math works at a 141% coverage starting point. |
| Yield: 11.5% |
$10K invested = $1,150/yr |
Paid: Monthly |
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The Extra Yield
This week's calendars, screens & answers
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| Don't miss these ex-dates: JNJ went ex yesterday ($1.34, pays June 9). HII Friday May 29 ($1.38, pays June 12). NVDA next Thursday June 4 ($0.25, pays June 26). PEP and WY both ex on June 5 — PEP's $1.48 quarterly is the first payment at the new 54th-raise rate, WY's $0.21 timber dividend is the base. Five checks in motion over 16 days. |
| I ran a screen this morning: publicly traded REITs sorted by net profit margin. VICI Properties leads at 71.2% — meaning for every dollar of rent that comes in, more than 70 cents drops to the bottom line. For comparison: Realty Income (O) runs 22% net margin. Equinix runs 14%. Welltower runs 11%. The casino-landlord model is one of the most profitable REIT structures in existence because the tenants — Caesars, MGM — pay for everything except the building shell. |
| Someone asked me: "Why are so many dividend stocks I see paying double-digit yields actually risky?" Honest answer: because the yield is a function of two things — the dividend the company is paying, and the price the market is willing to pay for the company. When a yield is double-digit, it's often because the market has already concluded the dividend isn't safe and has marked the price down. Three BDCs have cut in 2026 — OBDC, FSK, and TSLX (Monday's Watchlist). Today's two High Yield picks have something the cutters didn't: Q1 coverage. PFFA's underlying preferreds are paying their dividends fine. EFC's adjusted distributable earnings ran 141% of the dividend. Coverage is the difference. The yield is the reward. Coverage is the math. |
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| The Dispatch |
| Four names this morning. VICI collecting rent on Caesars Palace and the Venetian. Royalty Pharma collecting checks on 35+ blockbuster drugs. PFFA running an actively-managed preferred stock book at 9.5%. EFC at 11.5% monthly with Q1 coverage of 141%. Tomorrow we're back to Growth Stars and Safety & Watchlist — including a Dividend King I haven't covered yet this quarter. See you in the morning. |
| — Charlie |
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Dividend Dispatch — Footer
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