After a stellar 2025, the FTSE 100‘s dividends have now fallen to 3.1% due to surging stock prices. That’s notably lower compared to its usual 4%. And it shows valuations are climbing faster than dividends.
Nevertheless, there continues to be a long list of high-yield opportunities for investors to explore, with 91 UK shares offering a payout of 7% or more right now.
The challenge is finding which of these companies can sustain their chunky dividends for many years to come. After all, a high yield is ultimately worthless if dividends are later cut – something WPP (LSE:WPP) shareholders have recently been reminded of.
So how can investors establish a 7% dividend yield using an ISA in 2026?
It’s all about cash flow
Let’s start by taking a closer look at what’s happened with WPP. The once-thriving branding and advertising giant saw its cash flows sliced in multiple directions. But as a quick, oversimplified explanation, weak economic conditions lowered demand, resulting in key clients seeking to cut costs, walking out the door in favour of free AI tools to create marketing content in-house.
This perfect storm of structural and cyclical failures sent profits plummeting along with WPP’s share price. And subsequently, the dividend yield shot up from around 4% to as high as almost 12%.
A company experiencing a massive share price crash is nothing unusual. Even global titans like Amazon have had big stumbles like this multiple times, most recently in 2022. While it’s certainly an unpleasant experience, what dividend investors need to keep an eye on is cash flow.
Does the company still generate enough cash to cover its dividend payments? And if not, does it have sufficient financial resources to keep dividends flowing throughout its recovery?
In the case of WPP, investigating these questions prior to its half-year results would have revealed the answer to be ‘no’ in both cases, helping investors avoid falling into this yield trap.
A potential opportunity?
Even with dividends cut, WPP’s forward dividend yield for the full 2025 year stands at 7.1%, slightly ahead of our 7% ISA target. So with the damage already done, is this stock now a hidden opportunity for contrarian investors?
Again, it all comes back to cash flow and WPP’s ability to start generating excess earnings again.
The company has already appointed Cindy Rose as the new CEO, who moved into the corner office in September. She’s already begun developing a new turnaround strategy that will kick off in early 2026 with plans to streamline the firm’s bloated and complex operations.
Considering operational simplicity is one of the main reasons why its leading rivals such as Publicis and Omnicom have significantly outperformed by comparison, that suggests cash flow generation could see considerable improvement next year.
What’s more, if continued interest rate cuts spark economic growth, demand for advertising could support and accelerate WPP’s recovery.
Of course, it all boils down to execution. Right now, WPP’s staying on my watchlist. But if its cash flow starts to bounce back under Rose’s leadership, it could indeed be a high-yield share worth considering for an ISA income portfolio.
