What do you say to a company that’s just announced an 11% dividend? What if that represents its 12th consecutive year of dividend increases? And how about a planned 3.4% rise in 2026 in line with CPI inflation?
No, it’s not a dream, it’s Greencoat UK Wind (LSE: UKW). Renewable energy might be out of favour a bit right now. But huge dividend yields will surely never be unpopular, right? This one is in the top five of the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 combined. And to my mind, it’s the least risky among those leaders.
What does it do?
Greencoat is listed as a real-estate investment trust (REIT). It owns and operates a number of wind farms across the UK, both onshore and offshore. And the generated energy goes to a long list of buyers via National Grid.
At the end of December 2025, the trust’s net asset value stood at 133.5p per share. That’s down from the previous year, thanks to a range of things including power prices, share buybacks, dividends, and depreciation.
But the Greencoat share price closed at 93.45p before full-year results on Thursday (26 February). It means every £1,000 an investor puts into the stock now could buy more than £1,400 in assets — mainly the wind farms.
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But is it reliable?
Don’t like paying today’s high energy prices? Here’s a thought… If we match our annual energy bills by putting the same amount of cash into Greencoat shares — we could get an effective 11% rebate just from the dividends.
But there’s one common issue with very high dividend yields like this. They’re often overstretched and hint at a likely cut. And on the face of it, the risk of that looks high here. For 2025, Greencoat recorded a loss before tax of £193m, leading to a bottom-line loss per share of 8.71p.
Still, at least cash and equivalents rose during the year, by £8.4m to reach £14.2m. And forecasts suggest healthy positive earnings in 2026 and beyond, giving us a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of a lowly 6.5.
The company itself said it “expects to continue generating robust cashflow and dividend cover and expects to have c.£1 billion of capital from organic excess cashflow to allocate over the next 5 years.“
Uncertainty
These things are all very uncertain. And Greencoat is talking of various possibilities for disposals, acquisitions, and debt plans. A £168m reduction in debt principal over the year was welcome, mind.
Huge political uncertainty hangs over the future of wind power too, at least in the short term. However, Greencoat UK wind operates solely — as its name suggests — in the UK. So it should hopefully be immune to current American hostility towards clean energy.
Also, the poor share price performance — down 27% over five years — is hard to miss. Are these huge dividend yields anywhere near certain? No, nowhere close. But I do like management’s commitment to dividend rises, on top of that great track record.
It’s definitely one I think income investors should consider.
