The free dividend tracker to help you grow your wealth. Link your brokerage accounts and MerryDiv automatically syncs your holdings and dividends.
Data last updated: Oct 21, 2026
Snapshot (as of Oct 21, 2026): Western Digital Corporation (WDC) pays a $0.50 annual dividend ($0.15 quarterly), yielding 0.17% at $364.32/share. Next ex-dividend date 2026-09-08. Source: Yahoo Finance, aggregated by MerryDiv.
Dividend Yield: 0.17%
Annual Dividend: $0.50 per share
Payout Ratio: 1.9%
Ex-Dividend Date: 2026-09-08
Dividend Frequency: quarterly
Sector: Technology
Years of Dividend History: 11
Western Digital Corporation dividend history stretches back to 2013, but the current yield of 0.15% makes this a growth story, not an income play. WDC develops and sells data storage devices, including internal HDDs, data center drives, and external and portable drives, across markets in the United States, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Trailing twelve-month payments total $0.50 per share, paid quarterly, with the next ex-dividend date on September 8, 2026. At a beta of 2.169, WDC stock carries significant price volatility, which suits growth-oriented investors more than those seeking steady income.
Western Digital Corporation pays out just 1.9% of earnings as dividends, a payout ratio classified as conservative (below 40%). That figure leaves an enormous buffer between earnings and the dividend obligation, which is the primary support for the current payout level. Western Digital Corporation dividend safety is not under pressure from the payout ratio itself, but the company operates in the cyclical computer hardware industry, where demand for HDD-based storage devices can shift sharply, and WDC's beta of 2.169 reflects that earnings volatility is a real factor to watch.
Western Digital Corporation dividend history shows a CAGR of 13.8% per year from 2013 to 2018. Per-share payments grew from $0.7934 to $1.5112 over that window (the 2026 figure of $0.4250 is a partial year and not used in this calculation, per Western Digital Corporation dividend 2026 data). The largest annual increase in the window was 42.9% in 2014, while growth stalled entirely from 2015 through 2018, with the per-share amount holding flat at $1.5112 for four consecutive years.
| Period | CAGR | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5-Year | -26.5% | $1.51 (2016) | $0.33 (2025) |
WDC fits growth-and-income investors who prioritize dividend growth over current yield, not those seeking meaningful income today. The yield is low (below 2%), sitting at just 0.15% against a 5-year average of 2.55%, a gap that reflects how far the current payout has retreated from its peak years. The payout ratio of 1.9% means the dividend consumes almost nothing of earnings, so the floor is firm. What an investor accepts here is a negligible income stream and a volatile stock in a cyclical hardware business. What they get is a dividend structure with room to grow, if Western Digital Corporation chooses to expand it.
| Payment Date | Amount per Share |
|---|---|
| 2026-09-08 | $0.1500 |
| 2026-06-05 | $0.1500 |
| 2026-03-05 | $0.1250 |
| 2025-12-04 | $0.1250 |
| 2025-09-04 | $0.1000 |
| 2025-06-04 | $0.1000 |
| 2020-04-02 | $0.3778 |
| 2020-01-02 | $0.3778 |
| 2019-10-03 | $0.3778 |
| 2019-06-27 | $0.3778 |
| Year | Total Dividends |
|---|---|
| 2026 | $0.4250 |
| 2025 | $0.3250 |
| 2020 | $0.7556 |
| 2019 | $1.1334 |
| 2018 | $1.5112 |
Project income from WDC with the WDC dividend calculator or track your full portfolio with the dividend tracker.