Medtronic’s 49-Year Dividend Streak Faces a New Challenge: Is Growth Finally the Real Story?
Medtronic has raised its dividend for 49 straight years while the stock quietly lost a fifth of its value, but something in the operating room just changed the entire conversation about why investors should own it.
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
Shares of Medtronic (NYSE:MDT | MDT Price Prediction) trade at $86.75. They are down 7.4% this year and 20.06% over five years, and the dividend kept going up the whole time. Now the business is growing faster than it has in years. That makes it fair to ask whether the payout is still the main reason to own the stock.
Repeat Procedure Revenue Pays for the Dividend
Medtronic makes the equipment doctors use in the operating room and the cath lab: pacemakers, heart ablation catheters, spine and brain surgery tools, surgical robots and insulin pumps. A lot of that revenue comes back every year. Each ablation procedure uses a new catheter, and each mapping system a hospital sets up leads to more catheter orders. On the latest earnings call, management said the growing sets up base should drive future sales of higher-margin catheters.
That repeat business has funded a 49th consecutive year of dividend increases. The quarterly payout has grown from $0.04 in 2000 to $0.72, or $2.88 a year, for a yield of about 3.27%. Coverage is solid. Fiscal 2026 dividends of $3.639 billion used about 67% of $5.43 billion in free cash flow. The forward payout is about 48% of the $5.972 consensus EPS for fiscal 2027. The weak spot is how fast it grows: the latest raise from $0.71 works out to about 1.4%.
A 49-year streak puts Medtronic one raise away from Dividend King status, the 50-plus-year club we rated by valuation in a free report here: 10 Dividend Kings to Buy Now and Hold Forever.
Growth Now Comes From the Heart Business
Revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 came in at $9.76 billion, up 13.7%. Non-GAAP EPS of $1.45 beat the $1.39 estimate. An extra fiscal week added about $570 million, or 670 basis points, to that growth. Even without it, ablation stood out. Cardiac Ablation Solutions grew 88% worldwide and 139% in the U.S., and the Sphere-9 catheter picked up nine points of U.S. share.
“Our execution, alongside our innovation engine, positions us to serve more patients and deliver durable growth,” CEO Geoff Martha said.
Other areas lag. Neuromodulation grew just 3%, and management guided second-quarter organic growth to roughly 6%.
How Abbott and Boston Scientific Frame the Choice
Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT) has the longer record, with a 54th consecutive year of increases and a $0.63 quarterly payout. Its second-quarter revenue rose 13.0%, but only 4.8% on a comparable basis once Exact Sciences is included.
Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) pays no dividend and wants investors to pay up for FARAPULSE growth. Its 2026 organic outlook fell from 10.0% to 11.0% to 5% to 6%. A widely upvoted Reddit post summed it up:
“Boston Scientific peaked at $105 last November. It closed yesterday at $43.55.”
Valuation Gives Medtronic Little Credit for Growth
Medtronic trades at 15 times forward earnings and 21 times trailing earnings. Analysts rate it 3 Strong Buy, 16 Buy and 9 Hold. Their $104.83 average target means about 20.8% upside.
Verdict: The Dividend Is the Floor, Ablation Is the Reason
The dividend now plays a supporting role. It puts a floor under the stock, while ablation, renal denervation and the Diabetes spinoff provide the upside. Management expects the spinoff to lift operating margin by about 100 basis points. The biggest risk is ablation growth slowing toward the mid-teens market rate as year-over-year comparisons get harder. If that happens, Medtronic goes back to being a slow-growth income stock. The investor day on December 10th and 11th is the next checkpoint.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Chris Lange is a financial and geopolitical writer with more than a decade of experience covering a myriad of topics. He has published thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St., with past coverage focused heavily on stocks, IPOs, healthcare, defense, global affairs, and technology.
His work has been quoted, or referenced by a number of outlets including Business Insider, USA Today, Yahoo Finance, MSN, The Motley Fool, and many other publications. A graduate of Southwestern University, he studied business with a focus on investments and has previous experience in banking and startups.
When not reading or writing the news, he is following his passion for Lacrosse, playing chess, or building solar projects with his dad.
