Cash-covered, earnings-uncovered — cyclical. A 5.17% yield that no earnings payout ratio can describe: trailing earnings are negative, so the $0.60 indicated dividend has no trailing payout to quote. The cash case is better — management's 2026 guidance calls for $6 billion to $7 billion of adjusted free cash flow against roughly $2.4 billion of regular dividends — but this is a cyclical payer that has suspended its dividend twice in 20 years.
Key risk: Cyclical auto exposure — tariff costs, EV losses, and a first half of 2026 that produced only $220 million of adjusted free cash flow leave almost all of the full-year cash target to the second half.
Changes if: Adjusted free cash flow guidance falls toward the roughly $2.4 billion regular dividend total, or the regular $0.15 rate is cut. Cash coverage, not the yield, is the tripwire.
- ✗Payout-coverage check: No meaningful trailing payout — trailing earnings are negative, so earnings coverage fails outright. The offset is cash: $6 billion to $7 billion of guided 2026 adjusted free cash flow against roughly $2.4 billion of regular dividends, or about 34% to 40% of that cash flow.
- !Yield check: 5.17% indicated — $0.15/qtr × 4 at the $11.60 close on Oct. 23, 2026. A real regular dividend, but special dividends in past years make the headline yield history lumpy, and the rate has been suspended before.
- !Dividend growth check: Regular rate flat at $0.15 a quarter through 2026; no raise in the current year, and the trailing total fell year over year because the February 2025 payment included a special dividend that did not repeat.
What this grade doesn't say: It screens the dividend only — covered, real, compounding. It says nothing about valuation or price: a well-covered payer can still be overpriced, and its price can still fall.