5 Monthly Dividend Stocks That Could Turn Your Portfolio Into a Second Paycheck

A dividend is a promise about next year, and the companies most likely to keep it already know roughly what next year’s revenue will be. A business that bills through long-term leases, regulated rate structures or renewable service contracts can see its cash flow coming several quarters out. A business that depends on transaction volume, discretionary spending or commodity prices has to win its revenue again every quarter. That visibility is what lets a board commit to a payout and keep raising it. Each of the five names below has a specific contract behind its dividend, and the best example is a retail landlord whose portfolio is 99.8% occupied.

Agree Realty: Monthly Rent From Walmart and Home Depot Funds a Monthly Check

Agree Realty (NYSE:ADC) owns 2,825 properties across all 50 states and DC, leased mostly to retailers on net leases, where the tenant pays rent each month plus most property costs. The properties it bought last quarter carry a weighted average lease term of 11.2 years, and over 73% of their rent comes from investment-grade retailers such as Walmart and Home Depot. Only 18 leases, representing 40 basis points of annualized base rents, come up for renewal during the rest of the year.

Yield and safety: Agree Realty pays $0.267 per share every month, an annualized $3.204. At $65.28, that works out to a 4.9% high yield. The second-quarter payout was 70% of AFFO per share (AFFO is the cash-flow measure REITs use to fund dividends), and management called the dividend “very well covered.” Free cash flow left after the dividend is expected to top $140 million this year. Liquidity is about $1.9 billion, net debt to recurring EBITDA is 5.2 times (3.7 times pro forma), and there are no material debt maturities until 2028. In the recent record, the monthly dividend has stepped up about every six months, rising from $0.217 to today’s level.

Bull case: The shares are down 5.69% year to date and 9.04% over the past month, yet management raised its full-year AFFO guidance to $4.57 to $4.59 per share. That leaves the stock yielding more on a growing stream of rent.

Risk: The rent stops recurring when a tenant fails. AMC theaters are the largest item on Agree Realty’s watch list, though management said the list is “lower than it was a year ago or two years ago.”

Prologis: Warehouse Leases Rolling Over at Rents 36% Higher

Prologis (NYSE:PLD) collects rent on multi-year logistics leases, and expiring leases are being renewed at much higher rates. The company signed a record 67 million square feet of leases last quarter, occupancy reached 95.5%, and rent change on rollover topped 36% on a net effective basis. Its in-place leases still sit 17% below market, which works out to nearly $800 million of embedded NOI that requires no further rent growth. Its data center builds are, in management’s words, “build-to-suits, long-term leases with hyperscale customers.”

Yield and safety: The forward dividend of $4.28 yields 3.4% at $127.19. That payout equals 68.8% of the low end of 2026 core FFO guidance, which is $6.22 to $6.30 per share. Debt to EBITDA is 4.7 times. The quarterly dividend has risen every year in the record, from $0.44 to $1.07, and payments run back to 1999.

Bull case: Cash same-store NOI grew 8.5%, and the data center power pipeline is now 5.8 gigawatts. Rent growth that is already locked in gives the dividend room to keep climbing.

Risk: Leases only recur if tenants renew. Occupancy is 90.6% in Asia and 83.7% in Central Pennsylvania, a reminder that rollover can produce empty space as well as rent increases.

Duke Energy: 8.7 Million Customers Paying Regulator-Set Bills

Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK | DUK Price Prediction) bills about 8.73 million retail customers each month at rates set by state commissions, and that customer count grew 1.4%. Its North Carolina DEC rate case settlement includes a 9.8% ROE and a 53% equity capital structure. Duke also has 7.8 gigawatts of electric service agreements with data center customers, and those contracts include minimum take provisions. CFO Brian Savoy said those provisions “serve as the basis for revenue growth projections.”

Yield and safety: The forward dividend of $4.34 yields 3.7% at $115.86, or 66.3% of the low end of 2026 adjusted EPS guidance ($6.55 to $6.80). Duke’s most recent 2% raise marked what management called over 20 years of consecutive annual dividend increases. The balance sheet carries a heavy load, with $144.2 billion of liabilities against $54.75 billion of equity. Duke has already priced $600 million of equity through its ATM program to reduce future funding needs.

Bull case: Duke targets 5% to 7% annual EPS growth through 2030 and expects to land in the top half of that range from 2028. The stock trades at a forward P/E of 16.

Risk: State commissions can reset allowed returns. CEO Harry Sideris said “affordability is top of mind,” and DEC and DEP orders are expected by mid-November.

American Electric Power: Hyperscalers Posting Collateral Up Front

American Electric Power (NASDAQ:AEP) adds a layer of large-load tariffs on top of its regulated retail bills. Management said those tariffs “require customers to make long-term commitments and support the investments necessary to serve their demand.” AEP has 69 gigawatts of contracted load additions through 2030, and in the past month it collected nearly $2 billion in cash or collateral backing 45 gigawatts of Texas projects.

Yield and safety: The $3.80 annualized dividend yields 3.1% at $122.84. That equals 60.8% of the low end of raised 2026 operating EPS guidance ($6.25 to $6.55), which makes it the lower earnings payout of the two utilities in this group. AEP has paid quarterly dividends without interruption since 1999, and the quarterly amount has climbed from $0.50 to $0.95. It has held at that level for the latest four payments. A $3 billion forward equity deal covers all of the marketed equity AEP expects to need for its capital plan, and management is targeting FFO to debt of 14% to 15%.

Bull case: A $78 billion five-year capital plan supports nearly 11% annual rate base growth and 7% to 9% annual earnings growth, which gives the dividend a long runway. Shares are up 7.95% year to date.

Risk: Contracted load still has to connect to the grid. AEP acknowledged that not all queued projects will come online and that ERCOT reviews could shift timing.

Waste Management: Trash Pickup Contracts That Reprice Every Year

Waste Management (NYSE:WM) runs on scheduled collection contracts with municipal, commercial and residential customers, and it raises prices on them every year. Core price rose 5.7%, while collection operating costs rose less than 1.7%. Its landfill and transfer network, which management calls a “moat,” makes those contracts hard for rivals to take.

Yield and safety: The forward dividend of $3.78 yields 1.8% at $210.67, the lowest yield in this group but the deepest coverage. First-half dividends of $764 million used just 37.8% of first-half free cash flow of $2.02 billion, and full-year free cash flow guidance is $3.75 to $3.85 billion. Leverage of 2.96 times sits inside the company’s 2.5 times to 3 times target. The quarterly dividend has risen each year in the record from $0.29 to $0.945, and the latest increase was from $0.825.

Bull case: Second-quarter free cash flow rose 34.5% to $1.10 billion, and the full-year margin outlook rose to 31% to 31.2%. WM still bought back $1 billion of stock in the first half on top of the dividend. The stock trades at a forward P/E of 23.

Risk: Customers can leave when prices rise. Management said “when we lose national accounts, it ends up being as a result of price,” and it cut its revenue outlook to $26.275 billion to $26.475 billion because of lower volume.

Contracts Make These Dividends Predictable

Each of these five dividends is backed by a specific contract: a net lease, a warehouse lease, a state rate order, a take-or-pay tariff or a collection agreement. Agree Realty offers the highest yield and a monthly check, Waste Management offers the deepest free cash flow coverage, and the two utilities and Prologis fall in between, with payouts under 70% of guided earnings or FFO. The signals to keep an eye on are tenant credit, lease rollover rates, commission rulings and customer churn, because those are the forces that can break the recurrence.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.