Below is a price chart of CenturyLink (CTL) adjusted for dividend payments from 1980 to 2019 as provided by Yahoo!Finance.
At the current price of $16.27, CenturyLink is trading at dividend adjusted 1998 prices. Our article titled “Price Decline Equals Dividend Canceled” is a good perspective on investing for dividends and then watching them evaporate with the decline in the shares after the stock has been bought.
Unfortunately, that May 4, 2011 article was about watching your dividends disappear when there is a bear market. In the case of CenturyLink, investors have been watching their dividend payment get wiped away since 2014, long before the current market declines. This is contrasted against the price decline from 1999 to 2002 and 2007 to 2008, clear bear markets at the time.
Normally we’d say that the price of CTL could experience a recovery similar to the period from 2002 to 2014. However, the period from 2008 to the present has data we think will make it challenging to justify investment. Since 2008, the dividend payout ratio and shares outstanding don’t bode well for this stock as seen here.