We have a track record and a long track record of 18 straight years of dividend increases, and that's a record we're very proud of.

And our goal is to put the board a position to increase the dividend once again for the 19th straight year.

Hello and welcome to the Barron Streetwise podcast. I'm Jack Howe and the voice you just heard is Tony Skiotis.

He's the CFO of Verizon and he's talking about

the dividend. It's a biggie. I saw recently that Verizon had the 11th largest dividend yield in the

S&P 500. It's just over 6%. And to hear Tony, the payments sound reliable. Verizon's stock looks a bit like AT&T did early last year when we talked about it on this podcast. Since then, there's been a switcher-root. AT&T has run up, Verizon has fallen behind. The stock looks cheap. Could Verizon be due for a bounce? In a moment, we'll hear from Tony

and we'll get the bull case from a Wall Street analyst.

We'll also hear about a tiny fiber broadband stock

that could be a takeover target.

And speaking of Target,

I'll have a couple of quick comments

about the retailer target and about drinking.

Probably start with Target and drinking.

Listening in is our audio producer Alexis.

Hi, Alexis.

Hi, Jack.

Any business we need to get to before I turn to Target and drinking?

Yeah, I think you should tell the people about how you almost hit a bird.

Well, yeah, I did almost. I guess it was a waterfowl. And it was with my car. I was talking to you. I was in the car. I was driving past a pond near me. And I think it's a heron. I'm not a bird expert. But it was one of the big leggy ones that takes a long time to take off because it's so big. And it took off from one side of the road moving toward the pond just as the car was coming and it just, the car just missed it. I thought the windshield, I thought it was going to, you know, I almost hit a bird. But thank goodness I didn't. The bird's okay. I'm okay, too.

I think besides the screaming, you did a great job.

You maneuvered well.

Yeah, it was a close call.

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