Score: The dividend is real — warehouse rent, covered 1.43 times over even after the capital spending that FFO politely ignores. The 2026 story is the envelope it arrives in. STAG Industrial (NYSE: STAG) changed how it pays this year. An announcement on January 8, 2026 moved the dividend to a quarterly schedule and, in the same breath, raised the annual rate from $1.49 to $1.55 a share — a 4.0% increase after five years of raises averaging about 0.7% a year. At the November 3, 2026 close of $37.38, the new rate yields 4.1%. The third-quarter print (reported October 27, 2026) shows the dividend consuming about 59% of Core FFO and about 70% of cash available for distribution. What the headline skips: the 4.1% yield sits below the roughly 4.95% 10-year Treasury, the share count still creeps up about 1.7% a year, and five years of holding the stock returned about 5% in total. A real yield attached to a slow stock — the same shelf as Realty Income, one rung down.
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Official investor relations: stagindustrial.com
What STAG Industrial is
STAG Industrial is a real estate investment trust founded in 2010 and headquartered in Boston. The name is the business plan: Single Tenant Acquisition Group. STAG buys industrial buildings — warehouses, distribution centers and light-manufacturing plants, mostly in secondary U.S. markets the giant landlords overlook — and leases each one to a single operating company on a long contract. The tenants' rent checks fund the dividend checks. As a REIT, the company must distribute most of its taxable income, which is why the payout is the whole point of the stock.
The scale, at September 30, 2026: 606 buildings, 41 states, about 123.0 million rentable square feet, occupancy of 95.9% on the total portfolio and 96.2% on the operating portfolio. The operating engine is running well right now: same-store cash net operating income rose 3.5% in the third quarter and 3.9% year to date, and leases that commenced in the quarter — 3.6 million square feet of them — signed at cash rents 23.8% above the leases they replaced, with 90.3% of expiring tenants retained.
No single tenant can sink it. At December 31, 2025 the largest tenant was 2.8% of annualized base rent, the top 20 together were 16.1%, and no industry accounted for more than 11.4% (air freight and logistics). The weighted-average remaining lease term was 4.3 years — short for a landlord, which matters in the risks below. The protection here is not blue-chip permanence; it is 606 buildings, hundreds of tenants, and no exposure big enough to matter on its own.
STAG daily closes, November 2025 – November 2026: −3.0% on price alone, and roughly +1% counting the dividends. The year in one line — a run to a $42.61 intraday high in July 2026, then a slide into the $35s by October as long rates stayed high. Source: daily closes (Finnhub), checked November 4, 2026.
The dividend math
The claim — and the switch. The dividend is $0.3875 a share per quarter, $1.55 annualized, for a 4.1% yield at $37.38. The fourth-quarter dividend was declared on October 26, 2026 (record date December 31, payable January 15, 2027). Getting here involved a change of rhythm worth stating plainly: on January 8, 2026, the board declared the first-quarter dividend at $0.3875 and announced that the annual dividend rate was increasing from $1.49 to $1.55 per share, alongside a shift from monthly to quarterly dividends. The release gave the numbers and a new declaration calendar (late April, July, October and February) and no separate reason. The arithmetic is the part that matters: four payments of $0.3875 total $1.55 against the prior $1.49 annual pace — the annual money went up 4.0%. Not sideways, not quietly trimmed. Anyone holding the stock for the cadence lost the cadence; anyone holding it for the money got a raise.
The record behind the rate. STAG has paid a dividend every year since its 2011 initial public offering and has never cut it. The increases, though, had decayed to a token gesture: the annual rate ended 2021 at $1.45 a share and 2025 at $1.49 — about 0.7% a year across five years — before the 4.0% step to $1.55 in January 2026. A dividend that grows slower than inflation is a melting ice cube with good manners; the 2026 raise is the first one in years that actually keeps pace.
The coverage. This is the part that decides whether a yield is real, so here it is from the freshest print. Third quarter 2026, reported October 27: Core FFO of $0.66 per diluted share against the $0.3875 quarterly dividend — a payout ratio of 58.7%, covered 1.70 times. Core FFO is the flattering measure, though: it ignores the roofs, parking lots and leasing commissions a warehouse landlord actually pays for. STAG's stricter measure, cash available for distribution, was $109.0 million in the quarter — about $0.55 a share — which puts the payout at roughly 70%, covered 1.43 times. Trailing twelve months tell the same story: Core FFO of $2.62 a share against $1.535 of dividends declared (a payout of about 59%), and cash available for distribution of roughly $2.14 a share (a payout of about 72%). Management raised 2026 Core FFO guidance to $2.64–$2.66 on the same day; at that range, the forward payout is about 58%.
The honesty footnotes. Three of them. Third-quarter net income of $0.37 a share included a $24.2 million gain on building sales — real cash, but it is not rent, and Core FFO strips it out by construction. Core FFO also adds back $1.6 million of debt-extinguishment costs from a July term-loan refinancing. And tenant credit losses ran at 12 basis points through September against a 50-basis-point budget — a genuine tailwind that flattered the year's per-share growth and will not repeat on schedule.
Where the money comes from. In the classification used across this site, the payer is real revenue — contractual rent collected from 606 industrial buildings. Nothing is printed, nothing is sold out of a treasury to fund the check. It is the opposite end of the spectrum from an engineered payer like STRC, whose double-digit dividend rides on a Bitcoin treasury machine.
The $100-a-quarter math. At $0.3875 a share per quarter, a $100 quarterly check takes about 258 shares — roughly $9,650 at $37.38. A $1,200-a-year income stream takes about 774 shares, roughly $28,900. Run your own price and share count in the Yield Calculator.
The treadmill. STAG funds growth partly by issuing stock, and the honest question is the pace. Shares outstanding went from 177.8 million at December 31, 2021 to 192.8 million at September 30, 2026 — up 8.5% in five years, about 1.7% a year. Set that beside Realty Income's 135% increase over roughly the same span (two all-stock mergers inside it) and STAG's drip looks disciplined. In 2026 the company sold 3.4 million shares forward under its at-the-market program at an average of $39.00 — above today's price — with $70 million of net proceeds still unsettled at October 26; it sells equity ahead of need, not in a panic. And on October 26, 2026 the board authorized a $250 million share repurchase program, the first real offset to the drip in years. The per-share scoreboard says the issuance is being outrun: Core FFO per share went from $2.40 (2024) to $2.55 (2025), up 6.3%, with 2026 guided to $2.64–$2.66. Acquisitions through September totaled $475.8 million at a 6.3% weighted-average cash capitalization rate, bought with money that costs less — term loans swapped to fixed rates (the July refinancing fixed $350 million at 4.79% from March 2027 to 2032) and new shares whose dividend cost at the $39 average sale price is about 4.0%. The spread is thin, but it is positive: growth here adds a little per share instead of just adding buildings.
The total-return honesty check. Price alone is not the return on an income stock, and neither is the yield. With declared dividends reinvested: over one year, price −3.0%, total return about +1%. Over five years, price −14%, total return about +5% cumulative — roughly 1% a year. Over ten years, price +58%, total return about +144%, roughly 9.4% a year. The peer line cuts both ways: Realty Income's five-year total return was +8.1% — the same slow grind — while over ten years STAG's +144% runs far ahead of Realty Income's +67%, because industrial rents had a decade and STAG started it cheaper. The recent five years, though, belong to neither: both stocks paid their holders in checks and handed back roughly the purchase price.
Who's behind it
Founder and management. STAG was founded in July 2010 by Benjamin S. Butcher — the name is his trade, Single Tenant Acquisition Group. Before the public company he ran the predecessor platform, STAG Capital Partners, from 2003, through five private investment vehicles that rolled into the April 2011 IPO. He served as chief executive and chairman from 2010 until July 2022, spent a year as executive chairman under a published succession plan, and remains a director. President and CEO William R. Crooker has been inside the platform since 2010 — chief accounting officer of the predecessor, then of the public company, CFO from 2016 to 2022, president from 2021, and CEO since July 1, 2022. He is a CPA out of KPMG's real-estate practice; this is a promote-from-within succession, not an outside hire. His tenure record so far: Core FFO per share up from $2.40 to $2.55 with 2026 guided higher, an inaugural S&P credit rating landed in August 2026 — and occupancy down from 97.2% (operating portfolio, year-end 2025) to 96.2%, the honest debit on the card.
Ownership and skin in the game. Directors and named executive officers together hold about 2.22 million shares and units — roughly 1.2% of the company (2026 proxy statement, March 2, 2026); Crooker's own stake is 385,934 shares and units. The register is index money: Vanguard at 13.6%, BlackRock at 11.4% and FMR at 7.2%. Nobody controls this company, including the people who run it. The Form 4 pattern is the usual executive rhythm of vesting and tax sales; the largest recent open-market move was Crooker selling 93,732 shares in February 2026, about $3.7 million — a disclosed trim, not a rush for the exit, and there has been no insider buying of size to set against it. Alignment here is compensation alignment, not founder-fortune alignment.
Skeletons. The standing check was run — SEC filings, enforcement records and news coverage for fraud, restatements, blowups or settled cases involving the company or its principals, including the predecessor funds. Nothing attaches. The private vehicles became the public company in an orderly IPO; the public record since is acquisitions, refinancings and dividend declarations. Boring is the finding.
Valuation and risks
Valuation. At $37.38 the stock trades at about 14.3 times trailing Core FFO and about 14.1 times the raised 2026 guidance. The uncomfortable line is the simple one: the 4.1% dividend yield stands roughly 0.8 percentage points below the ~4.95% 10-year Treasury. You are paid less than the risk-free rate to hold equity risk, and the difference has to be earned by growth — this year, at least, the growth is visibly there (same-store cash NOI up 3.5–3.9%, new leases signing 23.8% above old rents).
- Balance sheet. Net debt of about $3.4 billion at 5.1x annualized run-rate adjusted EBITDAre (company figure), with $546 million of liquidity. Roughly 86% of the debt is fixed-rate — $1.925 billion of senior notes and $1.025 billion of term loans swapped to fixed — against a $463 million floating-rate revolver balance; secured debt is about 0.1% of the stack and the weighted-average debt duration was 4.6 years at year-end 2025. Ratings are BBB (S&P, inaugural August 2026), BBB (Fitch) and Baa2 (Moody's), all stable — solidly investment grade, and a full tier below Realty Income's A-range ratings.
- Lease rollover. A 4.3-year weighted-average lease term is short, and about 21.8% of annualized base rent expires before the end of 2027. The mark-to-market cuts both ways: renewals are signing more than 20% higher, but every expiry is a vacancy chance, and retention is volatile — 69.5% in the first quarter of 2026 before the third quarter's 90.3%.
- Occupancy drift. Total-portfolio occupancy of 95.9% is the softest reading in the recent record (96.4% at year-end 2025), and the operating portfolio has eased from 97.2% to 96.2%. Management told the third-quarter call it expects occupancy to recover toward 96.75–97.25%. Watch whether it does; a landlord's dividend story is only as good as its occupied square feet.
- Single-tenant structure. One tenant per building means a departure takes that building's rent to zero until it is re-leased. Six hundred and six buildings and a largest tenant of 2.8% cap the blast radius — they do not remove the event.
The score, revisited
STAG Industrial's dividend is exactly what the math says it is: rent money, covered 1.70 times by Core FFO and 1.43 times by the stricter cash-after-capex measure, paid by a diversified industrial landlord whose share count has risen just 8.5% in five years. The January 2026 cadence change — the thing most likely to be misread as a warning — arrived with the largest raise in years, taking the annual rate up 4.0% after half a decade of 0.7% creep. What holds the score down is the size and the slope: a 4.1% yield that trails the 10-year Treasury, a dividend that compounds slowly, a 4.3-year lease book that needs constant re-signing, and a BBB-tier balance sheet. On the Scoreboard it scores 72 out of 100 — Mixed, two points under Realty Income: better coverage after capex and a fraction of the dilution, against a smaller check that grows more slowly.
Check it yourself: links and sources
- Official investor relations: stagindustrial.com — dividend declarations, supplemental packages and filings
- Q3 2026 earnings release (Exhibit 99.1 to the Form 8-K filed October 27, 2026, SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001479094): Core FFO $0.66 per diluted share, cash available for distribution $109.0 million, balance sheet, 192,819,897 shares outstanding, the fourth-quarter dividend declaration and the $250 million repurchase authorization
- Dividend announcement (company release, January 8, 2026): the annual rate increase from $1.49 to $1.55 per share and the change of payment schedule, with the first quarterly dividend of $0.3875 (record date March 31, 2026; paid April 15, 2026)
- Q4 and full-year 2025 release (February 11, 2026): full-year 2025 Core FFO of $2.55 per diluted share, fourth-quarter Core FFO of $0.66, full-year cash available for distribution of $405.4 million
- Form 10-K for 2025 (SEC EDGAR): tenant concentration (largest tenant 2.8% of annualized base rent; top 20 at 16.1%), weighted-average lease term of 4.3 years, lease-expiration schedule, debt principal of $3.27 billion at 4.6 years' weighted-average duration
- Share-count history: Form 10-Q balance sheets (SEC EDGAR) — 177,769,342 shares issued and outstanding at December 31, 2021, against 192,819,897 at September 30, 2026
- 2026 proxy statement (SEC EDGAR): directors and named executive officers at about 1.2% of shares and units; Vanguard 13.6%, BlackRock 11.4%, FMR 7.2% at March 2, 2026
- Credit ratings: S&P Global Ratings release (August 6, 2026) assigning an inaugural BBB with stable outlook; Fitch at BBB and Moody's at Baa2, both stable, as confirmed on the third-quarter earnings call
- Price history: daily and monthly closes for STAG (Finnhub), pulled November 4, 2026; 1Y/5Y/10Y price and total returns computed from those closes with declared dividends reinvested, and cross-checked against published adjusted-close return figures
Key sources, all checked November 4, 2026: STAG Industrial's Q3 2026 earnings release and balance sheet (SEC Form 8-K, October 27, 2026), the January 8, 2026 dividend announcement, the Q4/full-year 2025 release, the 2025 Form 10-K, the 2026 proxy statement, and the S&P rating release (SEC EDGAR, company investor relations and the rating agency); Finnhub price history. STAG Industrial is a stock, not a token — it trades on the NYSE under the ticker STAG, and its dividend is paid in cash, quarterly.
Not financial advice.
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