Dividends are a great way to boost your investment returns. When companies pay out an annual dividend to investors — typically a single-digit percentage of their share prices — you can take home some extra income that can be accretive to your investment returns. This is especially true for investors who hold on to dividend-paying stocks with a long track record of growing their payouts each year.

But if you are an investor in the technology sector, it can be tough to find dividend-paying stocks since most companies do not return cash to shareholders or choose to do so in the form of share repurchases. But that is not the case all the time. Here are three high-yield technology stocks to buy in December.

1. Texas Instruments: Steady profits and buybacks
You might know Texas Instruments (TXN) for its clunky graphing calculators. But that is only a tiny piece of this business. Its main commercial lines come from selling analog computer chips (semiconductors) for the industrial, automotive, and personal-electronics sectors. With the rise of internet-connected devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), Texas Instruments has seen a steady tailwind in demand growth over the past few decades.

For example, in the third quarter of 2022, revenue hit $5.24 billion, up 13% year over year. The company has strong margins, with free cash flow of $5.9 billion over the last 12 months. All this free cash flow is what Texas Instruments uses to pay its dividend, which is currently yielding 2.8%. It also consistently raises its dividend payouts to shareholders, with dividends per share up 540% in the last 10 years.

With the durability of the automotive and industrial markets plus the high growth of IoT across multiple commercial sectors, Texas Instruments should have demand for its semiconductor products for years to come. At its current price, this stock can provide a great dividend yield for your portfolio.

2. Microsoft: A dominant technology giant
Outside of Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) is the largest company in the world, with a market cap of $1.87 trillion as of this writing. It has its fingers in many business lines, including Microsoft Office, LinkedIn, consumer electronics, and video games with its Xbox division. But the highlight over the past decade has been its cloud division.

Cloud computing was revolutionized by Amazon (AMZN), with its Amazon Web Services (AWS), and is now dominated by the big three: Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet (GOOG). Microsoft’s entire cloud division recently hit $103 billion in annualized revenue, up over five times from the start of fiscal year 2018. With the cloud computing industry projected to grow by roughly 16% a year through 2028, this incredible top-line growth at Microsoft’s cloud division looks set to continue over the next five years.

The growth of the cloud has helped Microsoft generate even more earnings and cash flow that it can distribute to shareholders. Over the last 10 years, its dividend per share is up around 200% and is currently yielding 1.07%. This is not necessarily a high yield based on its current price, but given the company’s consistent dividend increases, the stock’s yield should rise over the next decade and beyond, which is great for long-term shareholders.

3. Taiwan Semiconductor: Building the world’s chips
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) is a semiconductor producer like Texas Instruments, but it focuses on the advanced end of the market serving smartphone, cloud, and artificial intelligence (AI) customers. These customers include companies like Apple, Nvidia (NVDA), and AMD (AMD).

TSMC is a semiconductor foundry, which means it does not design computer chips itself but solely focuses on the manufacturing part of the supply chain. This technique for building computer chips is growing in popularity, and with over 50% of the global market, the company is set to benefit greatly if this trend continues.

Last quarter, TSMC’s revenue grew 36% year over year to $20.2 billion. The company also achieved an operating margin of 50%. If it can continue growing its sales while also putting up phenomenal profit margins, TSMC is going to have tons of earnings it can distribute to shareholders in the form of dividends. Currently, its dividend yields 2.2%, with management growing its payout by 281% over the last 10 years. With how fast the business is growing, it wouldn’t be surprising to see TSMC increase its dividend at the same rate over the next 10 years as well.

— Brett Schafer

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Source: The Motley Fool