What Have Medtronic Stock Holders Really Earned?
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Medtronic (MDT) sells medical devices across its Cardiovascular, Neuroscience and Medical Surgical businesses and pays out a portion of its earnings as a dividend. Dividends added about 3.3 percentage points to the stock’s return over the past year, contributing more than the share price. Yet over five years, the share price has trailed the market. Take a guess: how far behind the market did a five-year holder fall, before and after the dividends?
How Far Has Medtronic Stock Trailed The Market?
Before counting dividends, Medtronic stock trailed the market by 92.9 percentage points over the five years to October 28, 2026. The share price fell 22.2% in that time, while the S&P 500 rose 70.7% on price alone. An investor looking only at the share price took a loss during those five years while the market gained.
How Much Did Medtronic’s Dividends Add?
Dividends added 13.5 percentage points over the same five years, yet a Medtronic holder still lost 8.7% with dividends reinvested. These dividend distributions represented an investor’s sole positive return component, partially offsetting the underlying capital depreciation in the share price.
Did The Dividends Close The Gap For Medtronic Holders?
Hardly, because the market paid dividends too. Counted the same way on both sides, the four returns look like this:
| Return from Oct 20, 2021 to Oct 28, 2026 | On price alone | With dividends reinvested |
|---|---|---|
| The stock | -22.2% | -8.7% |
| S&P 500 | +70.7% | +82.1% |
Before taxes and costs. The S&P 500 is measured through the SPDR S&P 500 ETF.
With dividends, the S&P 500 returned 82.1%, leaving Medtronic holders 90.7 percentage points behind. The market’s own dividends added 11.4 points to its return, not far below the 13.5 points Medtronic’s dividends added to the stock. Medtronic’s dividends narrowed the gap by only about two percentage points, making little difference to how far a holder trailed the market.
Separately, see our take on How Tesla Blundered.
What This Means If You Own Medtronic For Income
An income holder in Medtronic collected more in dividends, for each dollar invested, than an S&P 500 holder did. The S&P 500’s dividends added 0.9 percentage points to its return over the past year, falling well below what Medtronic’s added. Over five years, though, that extra cash failed to make up for a share price that fell while the market rose.
Medtronic’s free cash flow exceeded the dividends it paid over the twelve months to July 31, 2026. Those months came before Medtronic completed the separation of MiniMed, its diabetes business, on October 15, 2026. This cash comes from its device businesses, with the largest segment, Cardiovascular, bringing in 38.4% of revenue in fiscal 2026. On the fiscal Q1 2027 call on September 1, 2026, management said free cash flow for the quarter was very strong and that cash conversion was improving.
For anyone who owns Medtronic for income, the figure to follow is its return with dividends against the S&P 500’s return with dividends, not the size of the check.
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