Death, Taxes, and Tobacco: The Case for Altria Stock Altria Group Dividend Payments When investors look for dividend stocks, one of the first metrics they consider is dividend yield. This measure measures how much a company pays out in annual dividends relative to its stock price. But it's important to know why a company's dividend yield is at the level it is and whether that level is sustainable. To do that, investors frequently examine a company's dividend payout ratio, which expresses how much of its net ...