The average dividend yield across the S&P 500 index has shriveled to barely over 1.2%, one of its lowest levels in more than 50 years. That leaves a small group of higher-yielding names, including AbbVie, Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola, carrying much of the appeal for income-focused investors.
AbbVie stands out even among those mainstays. The drugmaker is a Dividend King by virtue of its 2013 spinoff from Abbott Laboratories, and its dividend-hike history with Abbott stretches back 54 years. Yet AbbVie’s stock is down by more than 7% this year, and investors have a fresh reason to worry about the durability of its payout profile after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Johnson & Johnson’s immunology drug Icotyde in March.
Icotyde has been cleared for one condition, plaque psoriasis, and it is a pill rather than a jab. That makes it easier to take than Skyrizi, which is approved for four conditions and is given once every 12 weeks, while Icotyde must be taken daily. The concern is not just competition, but the risk that a more convenient oral drug could start chipping away at a franchise that has been a key support for AbbVie’s cash generation.
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Procter & Gamble offers a different kind of consistency. In 2025, the company’s net sales totaled $84.3 billion, and its annual free cash flow has ranged from almost $13.6 billion to over $16.5 billion across the past half-decade. That kind of scale helps explain why it remains one of the index’s better-known dividend names, alongside Coca-Cola, even as the overall yield picture across the benchmark has become unusually thin by historical standards.
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The tension inside the index is straightforward: the broader market is offering less income, so investors are leaning harder on a narrow set of dependable payers just as one of them faces a product threat. AbbVie may still have the balance-sheet and dividend record to keep its place, but the Icotyde approval makes clear that a long run of payments does not shield a stock from pressure that can arrive from the next drug approval.
