Dividend Contenders List: Top 20 Stocks

2. Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ)

Dividend Yield as of January 22: 7.03%

On January 22, Barclays reinstated coverage of Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) with an Equal Weight rating and a $43 price target. The firm said worries around competitive intensity in the telecom market may be overdone. Investors are expected to be “more tuned in to” Verizon earnings this quarter to better understand what those results say about competition across the industry, the analyst wrote in a research note.

On January 20, Verizon Communications Inc. said it would issue a $20 credit to hundreds of thousands of customers after a widespread outage knocked out service for about 10 hours, according to Reuters. The company said the disruption stemmed from a software problem and largely affected customers across the Northeast, Southern California, Texas, and parts of the Midwest. Verizon emphasized that the incident was not related to a cyberattack.

The outage caused enough disruption that several major cities urged residents to use other carriers to place emergency calls while Verizon’s network was down.

Downdetector, which monitors service interruptions, said it received roughly 2.2 million reports tied to the Verizon outage over 24 hours recently.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) is a holding company that, through its subsidiaries, provides communications, technology, information, and streaming services to consumers, businesses, and government entities.