The best way to get rich from dividend payers is when capital appreciation does most of the heavy lifting. Shares of Micron Technology (MU), Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL), and Alibaba (BABA) don’t pack much punch in terms of payout power. They yield less than 0.7%.
However, what they lack in income generation, they have more than made up for in upticks. Here is how each of these three market beaters has risen over the past year.
- Micron: up 317%.
- Alphabet: up 69%.
- Alibaba: up 63%.
Let’s take a closer look at why these three tech leaders are no-brainer investments that just happen to be dividend stocks.
Micron Technology
Shares of Micron have more than quadrupled in the past year, a mind-blowing feat given that this is a memory and storage solutions giant with $42.3 billion in trailing revenue. Companies this big with businesses this cyclical don’t usually make monster moves like this.
Your knee-jerk reaction may be to avoid Micron stock after a colossal surge, but zoom in before zooming out. Micron’s fundamentals have improved substantially over the past year. Just over the past three months, analyst profit targets for each of the next two years have more than doubled.
If you think Micron has to be overvalued after soaring 317% over the past year, think again. You can buy Micron for less than 12 times forward earnings. A year ago, you could’ve bought Micron for less than three times what it’s on pace to earn in 2026. No one knew that at the time. No one can tell you how high Micron’s earnings may ultimately go in the year ahead. With Micron playing a big role in the data center buildout for the AI revolution, this giant is poised to grow even more gigantic. The 0.1% yield won’t impress income investors, but that’s just the cherry on top of a huge capital appreciation sundae.
Alphabet
Google’s parent company was the best-performing “Magnificent Seven” stock last year, and it wasn’t even close. Alphabet saw its revenue rise 15% in 2025. This may not seem like much, but it’s Alphabet’s biggest increase in four years. Its net income margin has widened every year during that run, reaching a record 33% over the past year.
Google has been the top dog in search for more than two decades. It enters 2026 as a legitimate contender for the AI crown, too. Alphabet stock turned heads last week by revealing it’s earmarking as much as $185 billion in capital expenditures for 2026. That’s a lot of money, but how can you not trust a company that just smoked the market in 2025 on record margins? Alphabet’s 0.3% may seem like pocket change, but that’s on top of the 69% jump over the past year.
Alibaba
Let’s close out with China’s Alibaba. Its 0.65% yield makes it the leader on this list, but I promised you that this wasn’t going to be a list of tech stocks with the heartiest payouts. Alibaba is an e-commerce titan in the world’s second-largest economy.
It’s not too late to warm up to Alibaba. It trades at an earnings multiple in the high teens if you look out to next year. The story could get even better by then, as Alibaba has emerged as a potential provider of AI chips in China. This is a huge catalyst if trade restrictions between Alibaba’s home country and U.S.-based chipmakers continue.
— Rick Munarriz
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Source: The Motley Fool