These 5 Dividend Stocks Are Flying Under Wall Street’s Radar

Most income screens keep landing on the same famous mega-cap payers. Below are five picks from areas those screens tend to skip: a lender to small private companies, a landlord for theme parks and movie theaters, a casino landlord, a utility serving the Mountain West, and a Chicago insurer that also writes title policies. Among them, Gaming & Leisure Properties (NASDAQ:GLPI) pays a forward dividend of $3.28 on a share price of $37.98, a yield of about 8.6%. Investors pass over these companies because they are small, dull, or hard to categorize, traits unrelated to the strength of their cash flow. The trade-off is that thin analyst coverage and smaller market caps mean bigger price swings, and a smaller company’s dividend carries different risks than a mega-cap’s.

Main Street Capital: Monthly Checks With a Quarterly Bonus

Main Street Capital (NYSE:MAIN | MAIN Price Prediction) is a business development company (BDC). Put simply, it lends money to private companies that are too small for Wall Street, and it often takes ownership stakes in them too. At the end of June it held investments in 191 companies. Its regular monthly dividend works out to $3.18 a year. At $54.24 a share, that is a yield of about 5.9% before any supplemental payouts. Including supplementals, it paid $4.33 per share over the trailing 12 months.

Dividend safety: In Q2, distributable net investment income before taxes came to $1.08 per share. That covered the quarter’s regular monthly dividends about 1.36x. Management forecast Q3 to at least 97 cents, which would still mean about 1.22x coverage. Regulatory asset coverage stood at 2.44 times, more conservative than the company’s long-term targets. Loans on non-accrual (borrowers that have stopped paying) were 1.1% of the portfolio at fair value. After repaying its $500 million July notes, Main Street had $1.2 billion of cash and unused credit, and its next term-debt maturity is not until June 2027.

Track record: The regular monthly payout has climbed in steps, from $0.24 in early 2024 to $0.265 now, one of the few schedules where a check comes every 30 days (we rounded up seven more payers on that same cadence in a free report here). The 30-cent September supplemental was the company’s 20th consecutive quarterly supplemental dividend.

Bull case: Main Street earns more than loan interest. Its equity stakes produce occasional big gains. The Centre Technologies exit produced a $46 million realized gain, a 40% annualized return, and nine times the money invested. NAV rose to $33.92 a share, and management expects to propose another significant supplemental dividend payable in December 2026. The shares have fallen 5.02% over the past month.

Risk: Falling benchmark rates cut income on floating-rate loans. Management also expects a meaningful decline in non-recurring income in Q3. Supplementals depend on gains, so treat them as a variable bonus and judge safety on the regular payout alone.

EPR Properties: Ultra-High-Yield Rent From Places People Go for Fun

The real estate under movie theaters, Topgolf venues, theme parks, fitness centers, and hot springs is owned by EPR Properties (NYSE:EPR) and leased to operators on long-term contracts. The portfolio covers 346 properties with a gross investment value of $7.5 billion, and it is 99% leased or operated. EPR pays monthly, at an annualized $3.72. Trading at $54.14, the stock offers an ultra-high yield of about 6.9%.

Dividend safety: The Q2 AFFO payout ratio was 65%. AFFO (adjusted funds from operations, the REIT version of cash earnings) rose 15.3% to $1.43 per share. Tenants’ property-level profits cover their rent two times. Interest coverage is 4.0 times, and pro forma net debt to adjusted EBITDAre is 5.1 times, inside the company’s 5 to 5.6 times target. A new $1.6 billion credit agreement deals with the debt coming due later this year.

Track record: The monthly dividend has risen from $0.25 in 2021 to $0.31 starting in March 2026. Even so, it remains below the $0.3825 monthly rate paid in early 2020. That gap reflects the adjustment after the pandemic closed theaters, and it shows how hard a shock to tenants can hit the payout.

Bull case: The company raised 2026 FFO as adjusted guidance to $5.41 to $5.57 per share. It also lifted planned investment spending to $600 million to $700 million, deployed at an average initial cash yield of about 8.5%. The theater portion has declined to roughly a third of the portfolio. The stock has dropped 9.25% in a month, lifting its yield.

Risk: Tenant concentration. Topgolf and the largest theater tenant each produced 13.1% of Q2 revenue, and the top 10 customers made up 63.7%.

Gaming & Leisure Properties: An 8.6% Yield Backed by Casino Leases

Gaming & Leisure Properties owns casino buildings and land and leases them to regional operators under triple-net master leases. Triple-net means the tenant pays taxes, insurance, and maintenance, and the leases often run 30-, 40-, 50-year terms. The quarterly dividend is $0.82, for a forward yield of about 8.6%. That puts it firmly in ultra-high-yield territory.

Dividend safety: Q2 AFFO was $1.03 per share, so the dividend took about 80% of it. Leverage is 4.8 times, below the five to five and a half times target. The chief executive at the time of the call, Peter Carlino, said: “We can finance everything that we’ve got announced with what we have available today.”

Track record: The May raise lifted the dividend 5.1% from $0.78, bringing compounded three-year dividend growth to 4.4%. The full history is uneven: GLPI paid just $0.12 in May 2020, and irregular special payments appeared in 2021 and 2023.

Bull case: Q2 brought record revenue, up 9.0%, and 2026 AFFO guidance went up to $4.10 to $4.12 per share. The development pipeline totals $2.022 billion at a blended 8.77% cap rate. Despite that, the stock is down 10.34% year to date and trades close to its 52-week low of $37.33. The fundamentals have improved while the share price fell.

Risk: All of the tenants run regional casinos, which depend on consumer discretionary spending. The weakest master lease has rent coverage of 1.59x, and the Chicago development still carries construction risk.

Black Hills: 56 Straight Years of Raises Plus a Data Center Tailwind

Black Hills (NYSE:BKH) is a regulated gas and electric utility based in Rapid City, South Dakota, serving an eight-state territory. The forward dividend of $2.812 yields about 3.7% at $75.55, the lowest yield on this list. In exchange, it has the longest streak.

Dividend safety: The annualized dividend equals about 65% of the midpoint of confirmed 2026 adjusted EPS guidance ($4.25 to $4.45). That marks the top of the company’s 55 to 65% payout target. Management aims for FFO-to-debt of 14 to 15%, above a 13% downgrade threshold, and had more than $650 million available on its revolver.

Track record: Black Hills has now raised its dividend for 56 consecutive years. The quarterly payout went from $0.65 in 2024 to $0.676 in 2025 and $0.703 in 2026.

Bull case: Wyoming is turning into a data center hub. Black Hills has more than three gigawatts of data center opportunities in its pipeline, with about 600 megawatts already in the plan through 2030. For a separate 1.8-gigawatt project, a reservation agreement provides up to $377 million of refundable customer advances. Management is confident of growing EPS in the upper half of its 4%–6% long-term range. The market has noticed: the stock is up 28.23% over the past year.

Risk: The pending all-stock merger still needs Montana’s approval, and management indicated a decision could come around mid-October, or by mid-November. The company must also refinance $400 million of 3.15% notes due in January 2027, almost certainly at a higher rate.

Old Republic International: A Specialty Insurer With Special Dividends

Old Republic International (NYSE:ORI) writes specialty insurance, mainly commercial auto for long-haul truckers, workers’ compensation, and auto warranties. It also runs a large title insurance business. The regular quarterly dividend of $0.315 yields about 3.3% at $38.30. Specials lift the real income well above that: trailing 12-month payouts totaled $3.735 per share, including a $2.50 special in January 2026.

Dividend safety: The regular dividend used about 41% of Q2 net operating EPS of $0.76. Book value per share reached $25.33, and the bond portfolio’s book yield rose to 4.8%. Old Republic bought back $221.5M of stock in the first half and has about 640 million left on its authorization.

Track record: The regular dividend has grown from $0.10 per share in March 1999 to $0.315, and the 2026 rate is 8.6% above the prior year’s. Management said it may consider another special dividend if excess capital remains available near year-end.

Bull case: Title insurance pretax operating income jumped 130.5% to $55.9M, and the Everett Cash Mutual acquisition should add to 2026 earnings. With the stock down 9.13% year to date, it trades at about 8 times trailing earnings.

Risk: Underwriting results are getting worse. The combined ratio (claims plus expenses as a share of premiums) rose to 95.3% from 93.6%, hurt by $40 million of reserve strengthening in a run-off line. Q2 operating EPS missed the $0.7933 consensus.

Five Income Streams Most Screens Miss

Each of these pays its dividend out of cash flow that covers it: about 1.36x for Main Street, a 65% payout at EPR, below-target leverage at GLPI, a 56-year raise streak at Black Hills, and a payout near 41% at Old Republic. EPR and GLPI bring the ultra-high yields, Main Street and Old Republic add supplemental payouts on top, and Black Hills provides the most reliable growth. Expect more price volatility than a household-name dividend payer delivers. For investors who prefer cash-flow coverage over brand names, the income here is well covered.

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