Pfizer will pay a 43-cent dividend on every common share on December 7 to shareholders on its books at the close of business on November 6. The drugmaker declared the fourth-quarter 2026 payment in an October announcement, and the amount matches the 43 cents it paid in each of the first two quarters of the year. It is the 352nd consecutive quarterly dividend the company has paid, a streak that has outlasted a second quarter in which Pfizer’s reported results swung to a loss. For a shareholder, the size of the check is settled; the open matter is which of the two dates decides who receives it.
Two dates decide who gets the 43 cents
The record date, Friday, November 6, is the cutoff. A person who owns Pfizer shares at the close of that day is on the list for the December 7 payment, and a person who sold earlier is not. A buyer who has been thinking about picking up the stock for its dividend faces the mirror image: shares purchased too late in the cycle arrive after the dividend has already been assigned to the previous owner. Stock exchanges track a third date for exactly that reason.
Pfizer’s board sets the 43-cent figure again every quarter, and each new declaration restarts the same pair of dates.
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That third date is the ex-dividend date. The SEC’s investor education site explains that a company sets a record date by which a buyer must be on its books as a shareholder, while stock exchange rules fix the ex-dividend date from it, usually on the record date or one business day earlier. Anyone who buys on the ex-dividend date or later does not receive the next payment. Pfizer’s payment follows its record date by 31 days, from November 6 to Monday, December 7.
For a holding of 100 shares, the declared amount comes to $43 on December 7, and 1,000 shares would bring $430. If the board keeps the rate for all four 2026 payments, the annual total is $1.72 a share, or $172 on 100 shares. Pfizer’s announcement names no executive and carries no commentary, so the only statement from the company about the payout is the amount and the two dates.
What the second-quarter report showed
The streak has run through uneven results. In its second-quarter report on August 4, Pfizer posted revenue of $15.0 billion, up 3% from a year earlier, and adjusted earnings of 77 cents a share against 78 cents in the prior-year quarter. Reported results showed a loss of 4 cents a share because of $4.3 billion in non-cash write-downs of intangible assets.
Chairman and Chief Executive Albert Bourla called it “another strong quarter” in the company’s statement. Pfizer also raised the midpoint of its 2026 revenue guidance by $500 million, to a range of $60.5 billion to $62.5 billion, and kept its adjusted earnings guidance at $2.80 to $3.00 a share. Those two ranges are the figures against which the payout can be measured.
How much cash the dividend takes
Four payments of 43 cents add up to $1.72 a share, which is about 57% to 61% of the adjusted earnings range Pfizer reaffirmed in August. The same report said the company paid $4.9 billion in cash dividends in the first half of 2026, equal to 86 cents a share. Since two payments of 43 cents make 86 cents, that figure puts each quarterly payment near $2.45 billion, and the December 7 payment is expected to take about the same amount.
Scaled to a full year, the same pace comes to roughly $9.8 billion in dividends, twice the $4.9 billion paid in the first six months. Set against the $60.5 billion to $62.5 billion revenue range Pfizer gave for 2026, that is about 16% of sales going back to shareholders in cash. The comparison shows how large the obligation is for a company whose reported second-quarter results were negative: the dividend is a fixed commitment that does not shrink when a write-down hits the income statement.
The dividend is also the only way Pfizer is returning cash to shareholders this year. The report stated that no share repurchases had been completed in 2026 and that guidance assumes none for the rest of the year. Without buybacks, the 43 cents a quarter carries the full weight of the company’s capital return.
Confirming the payment and its tax form
Pfizer’s announcement asks shareholders for nothing beyond owning the shares on November 6. Those who hold through a brokerage account can see the position on the trade date and the payment on the account statement after December 7, and a sale placed before the ex-dividend date moves the 43 cents to the buyer.
The free official route for the tax side is the IRS. Its page on dividends says a Form 1099-DIV should arrive from each payer for distributions of at least $10, and that qualified dividends are the ordinary dividends taxed at lower capital gain rates. A payment made December 7 belongs on the 2026 form, and dividend totals over $1,500 are reported on Schedule B of the return.
What remains unknown is the next step. Pfizer has not said whether the rate will change after this payment, and its guidance of $2.80 to $3.00 in adjusted earnings per share leaves $1.72 of dividends covered by a margin of roughly $1.08 to $1.28 a share. The board’s next declaration will show whether that margin is enough to hold the line for a 353rd quarter.
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This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
