Podcast 259 - COMPARING 4 AI STOCKS (ADOBE, ALPHABET, MICROSOFT & META) TO A $323 STOCK WITH A 9.65% DIVIDEND YIELD

Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 259 on January 24th of 2026. 

My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". Until February 10th, it is available at a discounted price.

Today, I compare five stocks each with a share price greater than $300. Four of them are AI stocks: Alphabet, Adobe, Microsoft and Meta Platforms. The fifth stock (traded on the New York Stock Exchange) is as far away from being an artificial intelligence stock as you can get but unlike the four AI stocks it has anunusually high dividend yield of 9.65%. It is almost impossible to find a stock with a share price over $100 paying a dividend even as high as 2%. I wondered if this high dividend stock was a scam. I had to investigate this unusual stock and share with you what I learned.

 My books are not get-rich-quick books. They are about showing people just like you how to  select, from the thousands of stocks available, those that are financially strong with long histories of paying ever rising high dividends and ever increasing share  prices.  The objective of my podcasts is help give investors the confidence  to consider building stock portfolios as self-directed investors. Once your  financial independence is realized, you will, like me, enjoy a generous, reliable, safe income for the rest of your lives. 

Please, visit my website www.informus.ca if you wish to learn more about me and my writing.

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca

Transcript

Podcast 259

24 January 2026

SAFE DIVIDEND INVESTING

BUYING SHARES IN AIRPORTS OR IN AI STOCKS?

Greetings to investors all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 259, on January 24th of 2026. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of seven investment books. My latest investment book “Achieving Financial Independence Safely – 200 NYSE exchange Stocks Analyzed and Scored” became available for delivery from Amazon on January 3, 2026.  If interested, you can find more information about it, along with my other books, by going to my website www.informus.ca or by doing a search in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books”.

It came as a surprise to me when one of the listeners to this podcast asked me about a stock on the New York Stock Exchange whose share price was $323.00 and was paying a dividend of 9.65%. It is hard to find one blue-chip with a share price of over $100 paying a dividend greater than 2 percent. I wondered if the stock was a scam.

It took me back to a recent podcast where some AI stocks with share prices over $300 were discussed. This discussion came about in reference to chapter 11 in my latest book which was about the hot Artificial Intelligence stocks that are in the news because of how high speculators have bid their share prices. For example, Alphabet Inc’s share price was $303.42. Adobe Inc’s share price was $354.77. Microsoft Corporation’s share price was $484.8, and the most outstanding share price was for Meta Platforms Inc’s at $664.43. 

All four of these stocks had strong IDM stock scores in the sixties which indicate they are far stronger than most publicly traded companies (free IDM stock scoring software is supplied with my books). If these AI stocks were so strong, why had I not included them in chapter 9 that listed 200 outstanding stocks that investors could consider for their portfolios?

 There is a simple explanation why they were excluded. My method of investing looks for two main criteria. Yes, the companies must be financially strong as reflected in their IDM scores. The score grades such criteria as: current price, historical price, book value, dividend yield percentage, operating margin and price-to-earnings ratio. However, a stock must also be paying a dividend yield of 5% or more. 

How much of a dividend yield percentage to pay to shareholders is a decision made by the management of a company. It is paid out of the company’s operating margin. It is a strong indicator of a company's ability to generate a profit. 

Scanning the 25 years of stock dividend payouts in my latest book, you want to identify stocks that show a steady increase in their dividend payouts year after year. This trend provides insight into the experience and motivation of the executives responsible for making the revenue and the expense decisions necessary for a company’s profitable success and survival.

Unfortunately, while these 4 AI stocks share prices may be over $300 their management have decided that paying more than a token dividend from their considerable profits is unimportant. Adobe Inc. pays no dividend. Alphabet pays a dividend of 0.28%. Meta Platforms Inc pays a dividend of 0.32 and Microsoft pays a dividend of 0.75. Many established, profitable companies will pay as much as 40% of their profits out in dividends to the owners of their company, who are the shareholders.

Why are dividends important? Every five to ten years there is usually a stock market crash where the value of an investor’s shares may temporarily drop by as much as 50%. These downturns can impact share prices for one or two years before prices again recover. For speculative investors a stock market crash is very stressful, especially if their expectation was to generate money to live on by buying stocks at a low price and selling them at a much higher price. Those speculators who borrowed to invest in a high rising stock they thought would never stop growing can find themselves in very serious financial trouble.

Interestingly it is these overly optimistic speculators who cause market crashes. They bid up the share prices, and at the first downturn they are often the first ones who cut their sell price bids in a desperate attempt to abandon the stock and minimize their losses.

I have been an investor through three market crashes, in the years 2000, 2008 and 2020. While the value of my portfolios dropped by many hundreds of thousands of dollars in these crashes, the dividend income I live on did not noticeably drop. Why? Because most people continued to buy food, drive cars, pay their rent and live normal lives. The financially strong companies I invest in continued to make profits and pay their normal dividend payouts. 

I can look back over 25 years and see that market crashes had little impact on my dividends. Thus, I have learned to relax and accept the fluctuation of share prices caused by short-sighted speculators. Patience is required for successful investing.

Rather than selling your shares in a market crash, this is an opportunity to purchase shares in strong companies at a bargain price. Often the share prices of such companies will in time reach new share price highs and their management will increase their dividend payouts to maintain their traditional dividend yield percents.

These 4 AI companies whose shares are over $300 see no reason to offer the incentive of dividends to investors. They are quite able to sell their shares to a vast mob hoping to “get rich quick” on soaring share prices. 

The executives of these large companies, with their stock option bonuses, often make outrageously high incomes. Many are able to use company profits to buy back shares in their employer’s company at elevated prices. This buying activity keeps alive the illusion of the ever-rising share price. The executives enrich themselves instead of paying dividends to their loyal shareholders who are the owners of the company. They justify buy backs as being necessary to increase an underpriced stock rather than leaving it to the independent market to determine price.

Since it is hard to find one blue-chip with a share price of over $100 paying a dividend greater than 2 percent, I had to take a close look at this $323.00 stock paying a dividend of 9.65%. My research showed it had a book value of $108.61 which would be reasonable. The high operating margin of 50.18% was outstanding as was the price-to-earnings ratio of 15.x. It was even recommended as a buy by 2 analysts. When I scored this stock, it had a very good IDM score of 69. 

I do not want to be accused of promoting this stock. All I am doing is commenting on what I see is an intriguing stock. Thus, I am not going to provide the name of the stock or its stock symbol. I suspect some of you will be able to sleuth it out

The listener who brought it to my attention asked if I were prejudiced against companies paying such high dividend yield percentages. It is not so much the dividend yield percentage of 9% that got my attention but seeing a stock with a share value of over $300 paying such a high dividend. Usually with a stock paying a dividend of 9% or more the stock would be less than $50.

In looking further at this stock, I saw that it was first listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the year 2000 at $15.18. It paid its first dividend of $1.56 in 2003 even though the share price had slipped down to $13.25. 

 In 2004 the share price climbed to $19.65 but the dividend payout declined to 49 cents. The stock then started a steady climb. By 2008 the share price was $53.69, and the dividend payout was $1.93. By 2019 the share price reached $155.26 and the dividend was $5.21. During the market crash of 2020 it paid no dividend and its share price dropped to $96.10 but by 2021 the share price hit a new high of $188.99 but it only paid a dividend of only 14 cents. 

In 2024 the share price reached $315.01 and the dividend $6.42. The big jump in dividend payouts came in 2025 when the dividend was $25.71 and the share price reached $326.03. This jump is what drove the current dividend yield percentage up to 9.65%. 

I concluded from this historical data that the managers of this company have a habit of rewarding shareholders with dividends. That they suspended dividend payouts during the 2020 market crash probably indicates good management, but it does raise questions. Interestingly in 2020, the management did not borrow money to pay shareholders, like some dividend paying companies do, to maintain a false illusion of ongoing financial strength. If this is not an AI company, what kind of company can show this kind of growth?

 It is a foreign company that owns 19 airports in two countries. Most are in tourist destinations. The services they provide include firefighting and rescue plus the maintenance of foreign and domestic large passenger aircraft. 

 It is not a small company. It has a market cap of $9.3 billion and revenues of $2.0 billion. 

I had never thought of owning airports, probably because in almost all countries all major commercial airports are government owned, by a city  or by a government department. Are there other airport stocks? I found two others, both in the same foreign country, but neither were paying high dividends or had the financial strength of the example. Thus, it appears that owning airports is not a license to print money. 

If I had to make a choice between this stock and one of the 4 AI stocks which one, would I choose? I would probably choose this airport stock because it would add some foreign diversification to my portfolio while paying me a good dividend – most years. It has shown a management habit of paying high dividends over many years. By contrast, the high-flying AI stocks do not appear to have any inclination to pay dividends from their enormous profits. It is interesting that this airport stock has shown similar growth to these AI stocks. 

I would not want to pay $300 for any stock. With $30,000 that I might wish to spend I would only be able to buy 100 or fewer shares of any of these $300 stocks. I would much rather buy 10,000 shares of a $3 stock or 3,000 shares of a $10 stock or 1,000 shares of a $30 stock.  

The probability of doubling or tripling my $30,000 investment is far more likely with a lower priced stock than a $300 stock. We live in a capitalist society. Due to the unusually high share price of these stocks, they will attract competitors who will lower their prices and take profitable revenue away from these expensive stocks. 

In making any stock buying decision it is recommended that you take a day or two to mull over the company whose shares you are interested in buying. With this airport company you might come to focus on the fact that they did not pay a dividend in the last market crash in 2020. What caused the market crash in 2020? It was the covid pandemic. 

In March of 2020 I was on a small island in the Caribbean when news of the pandemic reached me. By chance I learned that the airline that would take me home in April had decided to discontinue flights to the island in a few days because of Covid. A doctor I talked to advised me to get home as soon as possible because there were only 5 intensive care beds on the island. I cut short my holiday and returned home. Hundreds of thousands did the same.

The airports for this stock are in a warm southern vacation destination. Their revenues and profits are dictated by the volume of airline traffic they receive. With thousands of stocks to choose from I would prefer owning a stock who has more direct control over their revenues and profits. 

Investing is not a baseball game where you must swing at every ball pitched to you. Think long and hard about your purchase, sleep on it, give yourself time to do thorough research before buying. For a financially strong company paying a good dividend little is going to change in a day.

That’s all for this week. I hope I have given you some insight and confidence in recognizing that you are perfectly capable of building your own self-directed, safe stock portfolio.

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