Yield on Cost Calculator

About this calculator

Yield on cost (YOC) divides a stock’s current annual dividend per share by the price you originally paid for it, not by today’s market price — it is a way of measuring how a dividend-growth investment is performing relative to your own entry point rather than relative to the market.

Because dividends tend to grow over time while your cost basis stays fixed, YOC on a long-held stock with a strong dividend-growth track record can end up far higher than the stock’s current dividend yield — long-term dividend growth investors use it to track how much income a position is now generating against what they paid, though it says nothing about whether the stock is a good buy at today’s price.