When the world’s most famous investor holds a stock, it’s worth paying attention. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has quietly built a position in one of America’s largest financial services companies.
And right now, that stake is throwing off tens of millions in dividends every year.
The position sits inside Berkshire’s massive portfolio. But the math behind it is striking, and it tells you something important about why dividend stocks matter to long-term investors.
Vanguard notes that reinvesting dividends creates compounding, where “earnings on earnings” can help a portfolio grow significantly over time, a principle Buffett has lived by for decades.
Warren Buffett owns this dividend stock
According to Berkshire Hathaway’s latest 13-F filing cited by CNBC, the conglomerate holds 7.15 million shares of Capital One Financial.
At Capital One’s (COF) current stock price of around $192, that stake is worth roughly $1.37 billion.
Related: 176-year-old bank stock pays Warren Buffett $576M in annual dividends
Here’s where the dividend story gets interesting. Capital One pays an annualized dividend of $3.20 per share.
Multiply that across Berkshire’s 7.15 million shares, and you get approximately $22.88 million in annual dividend income flowing to Buffett’s company, just from this one position.
COF stock key dividend ratios
Here’s a snapshot of Capital One’s current dividend profile:
- Annual dividend per share: $3.20
- Dividend yield: Approximately 1.66% (based on recent share price)
- Payout frequency: Quarterly ($0.80 per share)
- Payout ratio: Approximately 16%
- Ex-dividend date (most recent): Feb. 19, 2026
The payout ratio is worth watching.
At roughly 16%, Capital One has significant room to increase its payout while retaining enough to invest in growth, which includes its massive Discover integration and the newly completed Brex acquisition.
Capital One widens its moat
Capital One Financial is a McLean, Va.-based financial holding company with three core segments: Credit Card, Consumer Banking, and Commercial Banking.
It offers checking and savings accounts, credit and debit cards, auto loans, and commercial lending across the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom.
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Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank called the Discover integration “game-changing,” and the numbers back that up.
“We continue to see good opportunities to grow the Discover Card business on the other side of our tech integration, where we can implement growth expansions powered by our unique technology and underwriting,” Fairbank stated.
After closing the deal in 2025, Capital One’s credit card loan balances jumped 69% year over year in Q1 2026.
Revenue in the Domestic Card segment rose roughly 58% compared to the same quarter a year ago.
In addition to broadening its customer base, the Discover acquisition gives Capital One its own global payments network, providing a direct path to compete with Visa and Mastercard over time.
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Wall Street is bullish on COF as a dividend stock
Capital One reported adjusted earnings of $4.42 per share in Q1 of 2026. That missed estimates slightly, but the credit picture was encouraging.
The Domestic Card charge-off rate came in at 5.1%, down 109 basis points year over year. Delinquencies dropped 55 basis points from a year ago. These numbers make the blue-chip dividend stock all the more attractive.
- Wells Fargo maintained an “overweight” rating on COF stock, while Goldman Sachs analyst Ryan Nash maintained a buy rating, Benzinga confirmed.
- Multiple firms have price targets ranging from $200 to $300 following first-quarter results.
- Among 15 Wall Street analysts tracked by a research aggregator, COF has 13 buy ratings, two hold ratings, and no sell ratings, with a median price target of $252.
The company also closed its $4.5 billion acquisition of business payments fintech Brex in April 2026, adding another growth engine. And it brought the technology behind Capital One Travel in-house after a partnership with Hopper.
These moves increase near-term investment spending. But management has been consistent on one point: The long-term earnings power expected when the Discover deal was announced remains intact.
With $165 billion in total liquidity reserves and a common equity Tier 1 capital ratio of 14.4%, Capital One’s financial foundation looks solid.
And for Warren Buffett, collecting roughly $23 million a year in dividends while that foundation gets stronger is exactly the kind of quiet compounding that has defined his career.
Related: Capital One begins originating select credit cards on Discover Network