The 3 Dividend Stocks to Buy and Hold Forever in South Africa revealed. We have conducted an extensive fundamental and technical analysis to find the 3 best dividend-paying stocks in South Africa that you should buy and hold forever.
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3 Dividend Stocks to Buy and Hold Forever Revealed (2025):
In this in-depth guide, you’ll learn:
- What are the benefits of dividend-paying stocks?
- 3 Best Dividend Stocks to Buy and Hold Forever in South Africa
- How to Choose the Best Dividend Stocks in South Africa
- The Best Share CFD Brokers in South Africa
What are the benefits of dividend-paying stocks?
Investing in businesses that provide dividends is advantageous, particularly if you intend to keep your money in such businesses for a significant amount of time.
Many dividend-paying stocks are in defensive industries, which can weather economic downturns with reduced volatility. This is in addition to the consistent income that these stocks provide.
Companies that not only pay dividends but also have significant sums of cash are often solid businesses with promising projections for their long-term development.
A dividend is a periodic payment made to a class of a company’s shareholders. Moreover, it is distributed as a portion of the company’s profits.
Dividends are often paid out in cash, but they may also be distributed as shares of stock or other forms of property. But dividends are not distributed by every company’s shares.
3 Best Dividend Stocks to Buy and Hold Forever in South Africa
Historically, dividend stocks have been great investments, and some dividend companies have lasting strength. You can rely on them to pay dividends quarter after quarter and offer sustainable growth over time.
To provide the three best dividend-paying stocks you should buy and hold long-term for continuous dividend income; we focused on these metrics:
- Balance Sheet overall health
- Dividend Cover
- Consistency of dividend payments
- High yield
Netcare JSE:NTC
Overview
Netcare is a prominent supplier of private healthcare in South Africa and is committed to creating value for investors, workers, and the people of South Africa via constant innovation and a focus on continuously delivering the finest and safest care throughout the healthcare spectrum.
Summary of dividend criteria
- Netcare’s earnings cover dividends.
- Netcare has a dividend that is steadily growing.
- Earnings cover future dividends.
- The dividend paid to shareholders is notable, according to analysts.
- Netcare’s dividend of 4.26% is still low when compared to the top 25% of the dividend-paying companies in South Africa, which average 8.63%.
- Dividends can be unstable.
Benefits of investing in Netcare
- Netcare shares are more affordable than similar companies. They are a terrific bargain and exhibit above-average growth, but their financing is risky.
- After its “Nexit” from BMI Healthcare in March 2018, Netcare is now a stand-alone South African healthcare provider. Despite its misfortunes in the United Kingdom, the company’s South African subsidiary has generated a respectable return on capital over the previous 20 years, significantly surpassing its cost of capital.
- According to analysts, Netcare is forecasted to see its earnings grow 25.38% per year.
- In the past year, Netcare’s earnings have grown by 33.6%.
- Netcare outperformed the Healthcare sector in South Africa, which returned -19.6% over the last year.
- Netcare has not been much more volatile than other ZA equities during the previous three months, with weekly movements of +/- 4%.
- Over the last year, the weekly volatility of NTC has been constant at 4%.
- Priority has been placed on shareholder returns, with capital allocation centered on the following:
- Normal dividends (about 65 percent of income handed out)
- Reinvesting in the firm (20% investment hurdle rate).
- Buybacks or special dividends if sufficient cash is available.
- Approximately 14% of Netcare’s current market capitalization has been returned to shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks during the previous two years, or R2.79 per share.
Netcare Valuation
- Netcare’s underlying predicament is intriguing from a short-term investing standpoint.
- The Refinitiv ESG score for Netcare, based on the company’s position within its industry, is exceptional.
- The earnings prognosis for Netcare over the next three years is a strong asset.
- Netcare is one of the highest dividend-paying firms with the highest yield.
- There has been a dramatic improvement in analyst sentiment in the previous four months.
- Over the previous twelve months, experts’ forecasts have been significantly upgraded.
- Netcare’s price-to-earnings ratio would be normal for a firm that is anticipated to have extremely significant growth and, more crucially, outperforms the market.
- As predicted by the experts following the firm, the company’s growth rate over the next three years should average 31% yearly. Considering the market’s expected annual growth rate of 8.2%, Netcare is poised for a greater profit performance.
Astral Foods JSE:ARL
Overview
Astral Foods Limited is a holding company organized into three divisions: Poultry, Feed, and Other Africa. It contains around four manufacturing, processing, distribution, sales, and marketing divisions that are completely integrated.
Summary of dividend criteria
- Astral Foods’ earnings cover dividends.
- Astral Foods has a dividend that is steadily growing.
- Earnings cover future dividends.
- The dividend paid to shareholders is notable, according to analysts.
- Astral Foods’ dividend of 8.35% is still low when compared to the top 25% of the dividend-paying companies in South Africa, which average 8.63%.
- Dividends can be unstable.
Benefits of investing in Astral Foods
- Astral Foods currently trades 56.1% below fair value.
- The earnings for Astral Foods are anticipated to grow by 16.21% per year.
- Astral Foods’ earnings have increased by 100.2% in the past year.
- In 2025, Astral Foods’ earnings almost quadrupled to R13.80 per share, while its dividend nearly doubled to R1 billion.
- The full-year profit for Astral Foods was R1.07 billion, a 126% increase over the R473.7 million recorded in the 2025 fiscal year.
Astral Foods Valuation
- Astral Foods has solid foundations. Seventy-plus percent of businesses have a worse balance of growth, profitability, debt, and visibility.
- Overall, Astral Foods’ underlying condition is intriguing, especially from a short-term viewpoint.
- Astral Foods is one of the highest dividend-paying firms with the highest yield.
- In the preceding twelve months, the sales projection has regularly been revised higher.
- Analysts have been steadily increasing their EPS forecasts for the 2018 fiscal year higher during the last twelve months.
- Historically, Astral Foods has provided numbers that exceed expectations.
Nedbank Group JSE:NED
Overview
Nedbank Group is a South African financial services conglomerate that serves wholesale and retail customers with a full range of banking, insurance, asset management, and wealth management options.
Furthermore, Nedbank Limited operates as a wholly-owned division of Nedbank Group.
Summary of dividend criteria
- Nedbank Group’s earnings cover dividends.
- Nedbank Group has a dividend that is steadily growing.
- Earnings cover future dividends.
- The dividend paid to shareholders is notable, according to analysts.
- Nedbank Group’s dividend of 7.51% is still low when compared to the top 25% of the dividend-paying companies in South Africa, which average 8.63%.
- Nedbank Group’s dividends can be unstable.
Benefits of investing in Nedbank Group
- Nedbank Group’s Price-to-Earnings ratio is 7.9x lower than the 8.6x of the overall South African market.
- The earnings for Nedbank Group are expected to increase by 14.29% per year, on average.
- In the past year, Nedbank Group has seen a 73.8% increase in earnings.
- In the last year, Nedbank Group increased its earnings per share by 223%. However, earnings per share have grown by far more than the share price (only 24 percent).
- With a total shareholder return of 32% over the last year, Nedbank Group has been generous to its investor base. Including the dividend is part of it. That is better than the average annualized return over the previous half-decade of 6%, suggesting recent improvements in the company’s performance.
Nedbank Group Valuation
- When comparing Nedbank Group to other businesses in the same sector, the firm has a high Refinitiv ESG score.
- Nedbank Group’s profit margins are consistently at the top of the market. Therefore, making a lot of money is the company’s focus.
- This company is cheap relative to its earnings potential, with a P/E ratio of 8.2 for the current fiscal year and 6.94 for fiscal 2025.
- Nedbank Group looks to be overpriced compared to its net asset value.
- Investors looking for a high dividend investment may find Nedbank Group of great interest.
- Overweighting or purchasing Nedbank Group shares is often recommended by analysts covering the company.
- Over the last year, analysts’ opinions on Nedbank Group have been drastically altered.
- Nedbank Group’s plans are quite transparent. Analysts tracking the stock have not changed their projections for future revenues. Having sales projections that are so tightly clustered makes it easy to plan for the current and forthcoming fiscal years.
How to Choose the Best Dividend Stocks in South Africa
Company History and Past Performance
You can easily learn more about the company’s development over time by reviewing its past results rather than its current financials. By analyzing the company’s financial performance in the past, you may learn how well it has dealt with debt and generated money.
Foreseeable financial losses might be avoided by monitoring stock price movements. When choosing dividend stocks, it is still important to consider how those equities have performed in the past.
Avoid companies with high debt
Investors should avoid dividend stocks from corporations with high-interest rates and other forms of debt. Simply said, businesses that have debt are less likely to invest in dividend programs and more likely to use the money to pay down the debt. Therefore, checking the debt-to-equity ratio of a corporation is so important. Get out of here if the number is more than 2.00.
Dividend Yield
Dividend yield measures the annual payout as a fraction of the stock price. The dividend yield is a measure of the profitability of dividends as an investing strategy. Stocks in the utilities and commodities trading industries often provide the highest dividend yields in South Africa.
Finding growth businesses with a high dividend yield could be challenging. Moreover, it could necessitate you to be patient with market swings. However, large-cap companies with a high dividend yield can be a good option if you would rather have more stable returns.
Large-cap equities are often seen as having plateaued in their growth prospects. This means that there is a possibility that their values will not fluctuate wildly.
Suppose you are looking for companies to invest in South Africa. In that case, you might want to shift your attention from those that have paid a stable dividend to those that have increased their dividend yield year after year.
Maintaining a long-term perspective is essential for this analysis since a price drop could impact the dividend yield more than the dividends themselves in the near term.
Once you have identified such equities, you may use a Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) to buy them gradually and potentially benefit from rising dividends. Moreover, the power of compounding might work in your favor if you reinvest your profits.
Look for strong cash with low earnings expectations
Profitability over the long run is an important criterion for evaluating dividend-paying enterprises. It is important only to consider companies that have shown steady growth year over year since even the most unsuccessful businesses may have a profitable quarter occasionally.
Specifically, investors should look for businesses that predict long-term profit growth of 5-15%. But tread carefully; earnings disappointments are common for firms with growth rates of more than 15%, and they typically hurt the stock price.
Investors should look for businesses that generate a lot of cash flow to pay such dividends. Finally, a solid dividend history of at least five years indicates dividend growth. So naturally, buyers must ensure that their shares are acquired before the ex-dividend date.
Evaluate overall trends in the sector
To develop a complete forecast of a company’s future success, it is important to go beyond just its figures and into the industry overall. First, however, keep in mind that the behaviour of a particular industry might change over time.
The Best Share CFD Brokers in South Africa
In this article, we have listed the best brokers offering share trading. In addition, we have further identified the brokers that offer additional services and solutions to traders.
Best MetaTrader 4 / MT4 Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, Admirals is the best MT4 Share CFD broker in South Africa. Numerous South Africans like Admirals due to the breadth of its marketplaces and the quality of its research materials. Additionally, Admirals provides MetaTrader 4 along with a few Supreme Edition add-ons.
Best MetaTrader 5 / MT5 Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, AvaTrade is the best MetaTrader 5 Share CFD broker in South Africa. AvaTrade has over 300,000 clients and provides South Africans access to over 600 share CFDs.
AvaTrade enables the trading of stocks, ETFs, bonds, foreign exchange, and other assets using robust software like MetaTrader 5, which is suitable for CFD trading.
Best Share CFD broker in South Africa for beginners
Overall, eToro is the best Share CFD broker in South Africa for beginners. eToro is a well-known social investment platform that provides access to over 3,000 shares worldwide.
eToro gives new traders a full education and has some of the greatest trading tools and resources.
Best Low Minimum Deposit Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, FBS is the best Low Minimum Deposit Share CFD broker in South Africa. FBS provides South African traders with a vast selection of instruments and an innovative trading application.
In addition, FBS features a minimal minimum deposit requirement and provides traders with a no-deposit bonus.
Best ECN Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, Capital.com is the best ECN Share CFD broker in South Africa. Capital.com provides South Africans access to more than 5,600 tradable CFDs, including foreign equities.
Capital.com has over 400,000 customers and provides some of the finest ECN performance by combining prices from the industry’s leading liquidity providers.
Best Islamic / Swap-Free Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, Exness is the best Islamic / Swap-Free Share CFD broker in South Africa. Exness offers unlimited and comprehensive halal trading to Muslim traders.
Exness offers several Islamic options on its trading accounts, access to MT4 and MT5, and over 278 financial instruments across popular financial markets. Spreads on major instruments start from 0.0 pips, and Exness does not charge additional fees on Islamic Accounts.
Best Trading App in South Africa
Overall, XTB is the best trading app in South Africa. FXTB provides access to several asset classes, including forex, indices, shares, and ETF CFDs, to traders in over 13 countries. In addition, XTB offers South Africans a powerful and unique iOS and Android trading application.
Best ZAR Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, HFM is the best ZAR Share CFD broker in South Africa. HFM is a well-known CFD and forex broker registered by the FSCA that provides over one thousand trading products. As a result, South Africans may quickly open a ZAR account with HFM and begin trading with as little as 70 ZAR.
Best Lowest Spread Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, FXTM is the best lowest-spread Share CFD broker in South Africa. FXTM is renowned for its zero-pip spreads and more than 45 available forex pairs. FXTM also features an unusually low minimum deposit requirement and offers cheap commissions on the most popular trading products.
Best Nasdaq 100 Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, RoboForex is the best Nasdaq 100 Share CFD broker in South Africa. RoboForex is the finest CFD broker for South Africans due to its extensive selection of markets. South Africans have access to over 12,000 CFDs on stocks, cryptocurrencies, FX, and other products.
Additionally, RoboForex is renowned for its commission-free trading choices and some of the finest spreads on currency and equities.
Best Volatility 75 / VIX 75 Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, IG is the best Volatility 75 / VIX 75 Share CFD broker in South Africa. With IG, South Africans can easily trade more than 19,000 financial products in a secure, transparent trading environment governed by many institutions.
South Africans may choose from various trading and investing accounts supported by robust and dependable trading systems, including MT4 and IG’s proprietary trading platforms.
Best NDD Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, SuperForex is the best NDD Share CFD broker in South Africa. In addition, SuperForex provides South African traders access to various US and EU equities through the SuperForex mobile app and MT4.
South Africans may choose from eleven account types and anticipate some of the greatest ECN and STP transaction execution, with prices obtained from leading liquidity sources inside the NDD framework of SuperForex.
Best STP Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, FOREX.com is the best STP Share CFD broker in South Africa. FOREX.com is a multi-regulated, multi-asset broker that provides South Africans with a selection of share CFDs based on global indexes.
South Africans may anticipate some of the greatest performance from FOREX.com across various products, with affordable spreads and fees.
Best Sign-up Bonus Share CFD broker in South Africa
Overall, XM is the best sign-up bonus Share CFD broker in South Africa. XM has been a respected FX and CFD expert since 2009.
XM gives new traders a no-deposit incentive of 30 USD, which they may use to investigate XM’s over 1,000 trading products.
Conclusion
Some individuals invest in dividend-paying companies to get a steady income stream while benefitting from any share price growth. If this seems like something you would be interested in, it is worthwhile to investigate these companies with high dividend yields.
However, remember that there is no silver bullet in investing. Although dividend companies may bring stability to a portfolio, they are unlikely to beat healthy growth equities.
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Frequently asked questions
How can I make a steady income from dividends in South Africa?
Putting your money into dividends has the potential to be a very lucrative investment plan. This is because dividend stocks provide a higher total return compared to other types of equities.
This is attributable to the combination of a steady stream of income through dividend payments and the potential for capital gain. Over time, this return on investment might accumulate.
Are dividends taxed in South Africa?
Qualified dividends, if they fulfill certain standards, are taxed at lower capital gain rates than regular dividends, which are taxed as ordinary income.
How are dividends determined?
Since dividends are distributed from the company’s earnings, the frequency and number of distributions could change over time. Moreover, company dividends are impossible if there is no retained profit.
How long should I keep my shares to receive dividends?
You could still receive the dividend if you acquire a stock the day before it becomes an ex-dividend. However, if you purchase on or after the ex-dividend date, you will not get the dividend.
Furthermore, if you wish to sell shares before the ex-dividend date yet keep the dividend you are owed, you will need to wait until the ex-dividend date.
Why do share prices drop after dividends have been paid?
Since new owners will not get the dividend payment, the stock price usually lowers when it becomes an ex-dividend. As a result, stock dividends have the potential to dilute profits and negatively affect share values in the near term compared to cash dividends.
Addendum/Disclosure
No matter how diligently we strive to maintain accuracy, the financial markets are volatile that could shift and change at any given time, even if the information supplied is correct at the time of going live.
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