A taxable payment declared by a company's board of directors and given to its shareholders out of the company's current or retained earnings, usually quarterly. Payouts are usually given as cash (cash dividend), but they can also take the form of stock (stock dividend) or other property. Payouts provide an incentive to own stock in stable companies even if they are not experiencing much growth. Companies are not required to pay payouts. The companies that offer payouts are most often companies that have progressed beyond the growth phase, and no longer benefit sufficiently by reinvesting their profits, so they usually choose to pay them out to their shareholders. also called dividend.

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