The Biggest Chip Stocks All Yield Under 1%. Here's Where the Cash Actually Goes.
Key Points
Nvidia, Broadcom, Taiwan Semiconductor, and Applied Materials all carry dividend yields below 1%.
Nvidia returned about $20 billion to shareholders in a single quarter, nearly all of it through buybacks.
Taiwan Semiconductor raised its 2026 capital budget to as much as $64 billion, about four times what it paid out in dividends last year.
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) yields 0.45%. Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) yields 0.61%, Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE: TSM) 0.66%, and Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT) just 0.39%.
In other words, the most profitable corner of the technology market pays income investors almost nothing.
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The cash, however, exists. Each of the four simply sends it somewhere different.
Image source: TSMC.
Buybacks, fabs, and a fast-moving denominator
Nvidia is the newest convert to real dividends. In May, it raised its quarterly payout 25-fold, from $0.01 per share to $0.25. The yield still rounds to nothing because the company's market value has grown to about $5.4 trillion. The real money moves through repurchases. Nvidia returned about $20 billion to shareholders in its most recent quarter, nearly all of it via buybacks, and the board added $80 billion to its repurchase authorization in the same announcement.
Broadcom writes the biggest actual dividend checks of the group. It paid shareholders about $3.1 billion in its fiscal second quarter (the period ended May 3) at $0.65 per share, while spending just $231 million on capital expenditures. The company designs chips but leaves most of the manufacturing to others. The yield sits low mostly because the stock has climbed so hard, with the company's market value up about 35% over the past year to about $2 trillion.
Taiwan Semiconductor is the opposite case: the cash goes into factories. The company raised its 2026 capital budget in July to between $60 billion and $64 billion, up from the $52 billion to $56 billion it planned in January. Its dividend is climbing too (shareholders will collect 33% more per share in 2026 than in 2025). But the fab budget runs about four times what the company paid out in dividends last year, and building leading-edge capacity comes first.
And Applied Materials shows the yield can stay small even when a company hands nearly everything back. In its fiscal second quarter, the chip-equipment maker distributed $765 million (nearly all of the $845 million of cash its operations generated), split between $400 million of buybacks and $365 million of dividends. It also raised its payout 15% this year, a ninth straight annual increase. Shares have almost tripled over the past year anyway, so the payout can't keep up with the price.
That's the pattern across all four. The dividends are growing quickly. The prices and the buyback-and-fab budgets have simply grown faster.
Of course, payouts that grow this fast can become meaningful income over time. What the cash is buying today, though, is capacity and a shrinking share count.
Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Applied Materials, Broadcom, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.