McCormick and Clorox: Two Consumer Staples, Different Payout Contexts

McCormick Yields 60% Above Its Own History

McCormick pays a 3.56% yield. For this stock, that is unusually high. Its five-year average is 2.23% and its ten-year average just 1.90%, so the current yield sits 60% above its five-year norm, one of the widest gaps in this curated set. A spice and flavorings company does not normally yield this much, which is the first sign the market has marked the shares down. Our screen tags McCormick Undervalued.

A Wide Moat With a Light Payout

McCormick sells spices, seasonings, and flavorings, products that cost little but are hard to swap out on a grocery shelf or inside a food-maker's recipe. That pricing power shows up in the dividend's math. The company pays out just 31% of earnings, under the 40% median for Dividend Aristocrats, while raising the dividend for 38 straight years. A light payout on a durable, branded staple is a strong pairing: the raises are easy to cover, and the business is steady enough to keep funding them.

The Coverage That Clorox Lacks

McCormick makes a useful contrast with another undervalued staples Aristocrat, Clorox, which we cover separately. Both yield well above their own histories, and both screen cheap. But Clorox's trailing payout ratio now reads 104% against McCormick's 31%, and that gap is what separates the two dividends — with one caveat worth carrying: Clorox's GAAP earnings swing so violently from year to year that its ratio is far less stable than McCormick's, a point taken up in our Clorox analysis.

Clorox offers the bigger headline yield. McCormick offers the sturdier one. Its dividend is the better covered of the two precisely because it keeps more than two-thirds of its earnings instead of paying most of them out.

Why the Light Payout Is the Point

The 31% payout is not just a safety cushion, it is the runway. Keeping more than two-thirds of its earnings gives McCormick decades of room to raise the dividend faster than a stretched-payout peer ever could, even on modest profit growth. That is what separates a durable elevated yield from a risky one. A high yield built on a payout above 100%, as Clorox's trailing ratio now is, has no reported earnings cushion left at all. A high yield built on a 31% payout can climb for years. For an investor, the light payout is the reason the current 3.56% reads as a sturdy entry rather than a stretched one, and why the shorter 38-year streak is not the handicap it first looks like.

The Read

So McCormick is a quiet, wide-moat staple on discount. The 3.56% yield is high for this stock and 60% above its own norm, the mark of a name the market has cooled on rather than a dividend in trouble. Behind it sits a 38-year streak and a 31% payout with room to spare. The main risk is patience, a slow-moving staple can stay cheap for a while, but the light payout means the dividend can keep growing the whole time an investor waits.

Current price, yield history, and the ex-dividend schedule update daily on the McCormick (MKC) data page. The dividend record and latest figures are in the company's filings on SEC EDGAR. How we group stocks by history tier and assign a current dividend profile is laid out on our methodology page.

Disclaimer: This is informational only and not financial advice. Figures reflect the site snapshot dated 2026-08-09 and move with the market. Investing carries risk of loss, including loss of principal.