We all know that the United States has a superior dividend growth culture compared to Europe. One example of that is a large number of quarterly dividend stocks available to dividend growth investors.

On the other hand, European dividend policies are more focused on paying out a certain percentage of their annual earnings.

As a result, European companies usually pay out higher dividends and those dividends are at an increased risk of a dividend cut during an earnings recession.

The difference in dividend growth and stability is best shown by comparing two dividend payout charts of the Euro Stoxx 600 and the S&P 500 with each other (based on iShares ETFs, and both missing the last quarter 2022 payment).

Consequently, investing in a European major index purely for dividend growth is not something I would recommend. I would rather advise picking one of the dividend UCITS ETFs that are available to us as European investors.

The lack of proper dividend growth stocks also means that we are quicker leaning into investing in individual stocks. And unfortunately, those individual European dividend growth stocks often only pay annually or bi-annually.

However, he who seeks shall find!

The good news is that we do have several interesting European quarterly paying dividend stocks and I am happy to be able to share them with you in this article.

Hence, Let’s get started!

PS: have you found a European dividend stock that is missing from this list? Please share it in the comments and I’ll add it as soon as possible. Let’s build this into a list for our whole European dividend growth investing community!

European Quarterly Dividend Stocks

Every European country applies a different dividend withholding tax rate which is important when making your investment decisions.

That’s why I will split the quarterly paying dividend stocks per country into the following paragraphs.

I will also share a full overview with some important dividend statistics at the bottom of this article.

Quarterly dividend stocks France

Foreign dividend investors often pay an initial 25% dividend tax but are actually eligible to only pay a 12.8% dividend tax. Some brokers like ABN Amro will automatically settle the dividend withholding tax, but most of us will need to request it back manually.

Having said that, to my knowledge there are two French dividend growth stocks that pay their dividends on a quarterly basis:

TotalEnergies should be pretty familiar to you. It is an iconic European Dividend Aristocrat because it didn’t cut its dividend in the last 38 years.

TotalEnergies operates in the Oil & Gas industry and it’s in the midst of a transformation into clean energy. It has a long legacy of rewarding its shareholders with pretty large dividend payments.

Watch: which oil stocks to buy right now? Are we too late?

STMicroelectronics NV is a Dutch multinational, listed in France and of French-Italian origin. Can it get any more European?

STMicro is the largest European semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company with 12.8 billion revenue in 2021. They mostly create solutions for dedicated automotive ICs, Analog, Industrial & Power conversion ICs, Discrete & Power Transistors and much more.

Unfortunately, this company is not attractive to dividend growth investors. Firstly it cuts its dividend regularly and secondly, it has hardly seen any dividend growth over the last decade. On top of that, it only pays a 0.75% dividend yield at the current share price.

Dividend stocks from the Netherlands

There are a few dividend stocks listed in the Netherlands that pay a quarterly dividend. This is good news because the Netherlands has a favorable dividend withholding tax rate of 15%.

Both Shell and Unilever are Dutch-British stocks by origin but they both moved their headquarters to England in the last few years. You can also buy them on the London stock exchange, but be aware that Unilever continues to pay out their main dividend in Euros.

Having said that, they both have a long history of rewarding shareholders but unfortunately, Shell had to cut their dividend during the COVID crash in 2020.

They have been in a steep recovery since then and recently announced an upcoming 15% dividend hike which will be paid in March 2023.

On the other hand, Unilever is going through a difficult period right now as it’s lacking proper bottom-line growth. That’s probably also the reason why they recently decided to keep their year-over-year dividend flat.

Honestly, that’s not a problem for me and Unilever did this several times before during their long dividend history. The fact is that they only cut their dividend once since the second world war. This was only by 1 cent or in other words, 3.1%.

ASML Holding NV just recently started to pay their dividends on a quarterly basis. If you are looking for a business with a strong monopoly, then please don’t look any further.

They are the only manufacturer of high-end EUV machines which cost at least 150 million dollars per piece to acquire. These machines are key to designing and manufacturing chips for phones, computers, data centers, etc.

The company has increased its dividends in the last 14 years with a 5-year compounded annual dividend growth rate of 35%. This is truly amazing and it shows the power of their underlying profitable growth. Unfortunately, we have to be patient because the stock currently only yields 1.15%.

Read more: the best Dutch dividend growth stocks

Quarterly paying stocks from Sweden

To my surprise, Sweden has several quarterly paying dividend stocks. This makes investing on the Stockholm stock exchange more attractive. We all know that there is a 30% dividend withholding tax in Sweden, so that often prevents dividend growth investors to initiate a position in one of their stocks.

On the other hand, the Swedish kroon has weakened quite significantly since the start of this year, so it became much more attractive to buy some Swedish dividend stocks. This applies of course to you if you are still in the accumulation phase.

Having said that, I found 5 Swedish dividend stocks that pay a quarterly dividend and 2 stocks that pay a monthly dividend:

Fun fact: all of these dividend stocks are involved in Real Estate.

My favorite stock is Castellum AB which is currently the 14th biggest position in my dividend growth portfolio. It is one of the largest Nordic real estate companies specialising in office space.

I like this dividend stock because it increased its dividends 24 years consecutively. Besides that, it grew its dividend with a 7.46% 5-year compounded annual growth rate.

Watch: Castellum AB stock analysis

The next stock that caught my attention is Cibus Nordic Real Estate AB. Cibus is a leader in grocery-anchored real estate with assets in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Its largest tenants in 2021 were Kesko (41%), Tokmanni (22%), Coop (13%), S Group (9%), and Lidl (5%).

There are two financial things that I really like about Cibus:

1. It pays a monthly dividend
2. It has a financial target that aims to increase its dividend 5% annually

This makes the stock very attractive from a dividend stock screener point of view and it already provides a 6.67% starting yield.

However, it does ring some alarm bells because the stock is currently trading at ~150 SEK while its 52-week high was 291 SEK. This shows that the current market environment has not been easy for the stock and that shareholders became bearish on the company.

Honestly, this is the first time that I got introduced to this stock and that’s why I wanted to ask if there are any shareholders reading this post. If so, what are your thoughts about Cibus? What’s your bull case and what are the biggest risks you see?

Having said that, I will not discuss the other stocks to keep this article as condensed as possible. But please be cautious about all these 5 quarterly paying Swedish dividend stocks.

Owning Real Estate stocks has historically been one of the best sectors to own in an inflationary environment, but you really need to make sure that you own the right ones.

That’s why I recommend looking for real estate stocks with a progressive dividend policy, strong balance sheet, long-dated debt maturity schedules, and inflation-protecting rent-escalators in their contracts. That’s how you can decrease your risk of a dividend cut.

Quarterly paying dividend stocks UK

The London stock exchange is preferred by many of you due to its 0% foreign dividend withholding tax. That’s why quarterly paying British dividend stocks are a must to be included in this article!

And it gets even better because some of these have made it on the list of 20 best UK dividend stocks with outstanding dividend growth track records.

Having said that, I have currently found 13 quarterly paying dividend stocks (incl. Shell and Unilever), but I suspect that there are many more of these:

This table clearly shows the dividend culture in the United Kingdom. However, many of these did cut their dividend during the COVID crash, so some caution is warranted for pure-play dividend growth investors.

Having said that, my favorite British dividend stock on this list is British American Tobacco. I wrote a stock analysis about them two years ago and I haven’t changed my mind about them.

On the contrary, I became even more bullish due to their strength in new “smoker-friendlier” products. They are clearly dominating the US market after they were able to win a patent-infringement case in the US which put their competitors (i.e. Altria) on the sidelines for now.

British American Tobacco is a strong European dividend aristocrat (22 years of growth) with a generous yield of 6.18%.

Read more: British American Tobacco stock analysis

GSK Plc is another interesting dividend stock. It recently spun off its consumer healthcare business into a newly created company called Haleon Plc. As a result, they have also updated their dividend policy which is now more progressive compared to their decade-long flat dividend from the past.

GSK’s spinn-off Haleon Plc has yet to announce its new dividend. However, it’s already confirmed that this will be a quarterly dividend in line with its GSK heritage of dividend payments.

The other dividend stocks in this list are a mixture of large-cap and small-cap stocks. I strongly recommend proper due diligence as many of these have limited exposure in the financial community.

Other quarterly dividend stocks

There are still 3 other quarterly paying dividend stocks from 3 different countries. Let’s bundle them up and I might give them their own paragraph in the fugure.

Tryg A/S is a Danish insurance company specialised in non-life insurance. They serve ~5.3 million customers and they have a top 3 market position across Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Most importantly, they have a progressive dividend policy which they adhered to until last year. In 2021 they acquired RSA and did an equity raise which led them to decrease their dividend per share.

Unfortunately this broke their track record, but they are still paying a healthy 3.93% dividend.

Another interesting stock is Eni SpA. This company is an Italian oil & gas company which is fully dedicated to the energy transition.

As you can imagine, the current oil & gas prices are a boon to their cash flow. That’s why they are speeding up their investments in the energy transition and to increase their buybacks in an effort to further reward shareholders.

This is a welcome gesture, because unfortunately they cut their dividend by 60% during the Covid crisis.

The full overview

Last but not least, it’s my mission to make dividend investing easier for European citizens.

That’s why I must of course include a full list with some basic stock data so that you will have all those European quarterly dividend payers in a single overview.

Final Thoughts

As always, this took me quite a while to compile because there’s simply no proper datasource available from which I can easily pull structured and clean data.

Hence, you might therefore discover some incorrect data in this article. If that’s the case, then please don’t hesitate to share it in the comment section below this article and I will try to correct it as soon as possible.

Besides that, I would really like to thank some of you as well. Your responses to my questions about European quarterly dividend stocks on Twitter and Facebook have helped me tremendously to compile this article.

I can’t thank you enough for this, because I have again discovered some very nice European gems in here. As an example, I’m very intrigued by Cibus and Greencoat UK Wind Plc. I will definitely give them a further look and potentially even do a full analysis on them.

But for now, it’s time to close-out this article and to enjoy a nice warm Capuccino.

If you found this overview useful then please help me spread the word by sharing it on other platforms, communities and social media.

This is how we can inspire other European investors to take matters in their own hand and build that passive income stream!

Yours Truly,

European Dividend Growth Investor