AT&T Stock Forecast and T Dividend History: Is T a Buy in 2026?
AT$18BAnalyst Avg Target$30.53Analyst ConsensusBuy (17 analysts) Live data: Yahoo Finance T · AT&T Investor Relations AT&T Dividend History: From 1881 to Today AT&Ts dividend history is one of the longest in American corporate history — the company has paid dividends continuously since 1881, making it one of only a handful of US companies to maintain uninterrupted dividend payments for over 140 years. 1980s–2000s growth era: AT&T grew its quarterly dividend from $0.58 annually in 1988 to $0.73 by 1992, then to over $1.00 per share through the late 1990s. The company was a “Dividend Aristocrat” for decades, raising its payout annually from 1985 through 2021 — a 36-year consecutive increase streak. 2018–2021 DirecTV/WarnerMedia era: The massive debt accumulated from the $67 billion DirecTV acquisition (2015) and the $85 billion WarnerMedia acquisition (2018) put the dividend under strain. AT&T was paying $2.08 annually per share while carrying extraordinary debt, making the payout unsustainable relative to free cash flow. 2022 reset: When AT&T spun off WarnerMedia in April 2022, creating Warner Bros. Discovery as a separate public company, it simultaneously reduced its quarterly dividend from $0.52 to $0.2775 per share ($1.11 annually). This cut — roughly 47% — was the most significant negative event in AT&Ts modern dividend









