Dividend stocks started the new year on a bullish foot. With growth stocks surging again, however, dividend payers have fallen a bit back out of favor.
If you’re an income-minded investor though, nothing’s really changed… except for the price of the tickers you may be interested in owning. A bunch of them now cost much less than they did just a few weeks ago, while a small handful of them are now dirt cheap. Here’s a look at three of the S&P 500‘s (^GSPC +1.20%) top dividend names that are now down 34%, 29%, and a hefty 37% from recent highs that you may want to scoop up at a discount while you can.
Progressive
It’s been a tough 12-month stretch for Progressive‘s (PGR 0.35%) shareholders. The insurer‘s stock is down 29% from last May’s peak, largely on (legitimate) concerns that a fantastic 2024 would be a tough act to follow. Not only has its competition stepped up, but the rising cost of reimbursements poses a clear threat to its profitability. The company’s also posted some disappointing quarterly numbers in the meantime.
Today’s Change
(-0.35%) $-0.71
Current Price
$202.76
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$119B
Day’s Range
$202.44 – $206.06
52wk Range
$192.02 – $289.96
Volume
85K
Avg Vol
3.3M
Dividend Yield
6.86%
For all the naysaying, though, it’s worth highlighting that last year’s net income grew more than 30% on revenue growth of 16%, which widened its underwriting profit margin from 11.2% to 12.6%. The company’s off to a pretty good start this year as well, with net income up 10% through the first three months of 2026 on premium growth of 6% and a 9% increase in the total number of active policies.
Investors are waiting for problems that just aren’t materializing. They’ll figure it out sooner or later, and likely sooner.
Between now and then, however, this stock’s steep sell-off has inflated its trailing dividend yield up to 6.8%. Just bear in mind that the vast majority of its underlying payout is a once-per-year payment of its profits achieved during the year. It’s not exactly consistent, even if it is usually sizable. You won’t want to make PGR your first or only dividend holding, particularly if you use these dividend payments to pay your bills.
Gen Digital
Gen Digital (GEN +1.72%) may be one of the stock market’s best-kept secrets. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ve never even heard of it — its $12 billion market just doesn’t turn many heads.
Nevertheless, with a forward-looking dividend yield of 2.5% and a well-established history of paying something every quarter to shareholders, this stock’s 37% pullback from August’s high makes for a compelling bullish argument.
Gen Digital is a digital security service provider. It does a lot, but you may know it best by its brands LifeLock and Norton. It also owns Avast and financial websites Moneylion and GoBankingRates, which it also operates. Roughly 500 million people use at least one of its products, most of which generate recurring revenue. It was on pace to turn nearly $5 billion worth of revenue into a per-share profit of $2.55 for the fiscal year that ended in March, up 26% and 15%, respectively.
Image source: Getty Images.
As for why shares have performed so poorly of late despite this pullback, dialing back their forward-looking price-to-earnings ratio to less than 7, it was largely caught up in the same sell-off that upended plenty of artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity stocks; broad economic weakness isn’t helping either. Indeed, some investors — professional and amateur alike — fear that the rise of AI-powered alternatives will reduce the need for custom-coded security solutions like the ones this company offers.
In reality, though, the rise of AI-powered hacking and digital security threats is increasing the need for proven cybersecurity solutions like LifeLock and Norton. As is the case with Progressive, the market should see this soon enough.
The one arguable downside to Gen Digital is that it hasn’t raised its dividend since 2020. The company’s not necessarily unwilling to do so; it’s just waiting for the right time.
Ares Management
Last but not least, add Ares Management (ARES +1.34%) to your list of S&P 500 dividend stocks to buy while it’s still down 34% from its early January high. Newcomers will be plugging into a forward-looking yield of 4.6%; its dividend has now been raised for eight years in a row.
That’s nowhere near the sort of dividend growth track record held by the market’s official Dividend Kings, which have upped their annual payouts for a minimum of 50 years. But it’s a solid start for this company that’s been committed to a more predictable quarterly payout since 2018. And it’s improved by more than a little. Its quarterly per-share payment of $0.28 back in 2018 has since grown to this year’s payment of $1.35 per share.
Today’s Change
(1.34%) $1.56
Current Price
$117.78
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$26B
Day’s Range
$117.02 – $121.20
52wk Range
$95.80 – $195.26
Volume
4M
Avg Vol
4.2M
Gross Margin
78.50%
Dividend Yield
4.00%
It’s a business built for this sort of consistency, of course. Just as the name suggests, Ares Management is an investment manager, collecting a quarterly fee for the capital it provides to companies, and then oversees. It turned $5.6 billion worth of revenue into nearly $1.1 billion in net income last year, most of which was passed along to shareholders in the form of dividends.
That’s down slightly from 2024’s comparisons, although the market didn’t really start to worry about the matter until this year, when broad economic weakness became a much more serious threat to the private credit industry. Investment bank JPMorgan Chase even went as far as to write down the values of some of its private-credit loans last quarter, while — as part of an effort to curb the liquidity headache that such heavy redemptions cause — Ares itself recently imposed a limit on the amount of money its investors could withdraw from their stake in the company; it looks problematic.
The headwind isn’t anything the asset manager has faced and survived before, however. And buying on these dips has typically paid off in the long run.
