Amgen (AMGN) will raise its quarterly dividend by 10.0 percent to $1.76 per share in 2021. This follows a 10.3 percent hike to $1.60 per share announced by Amgen in December 2019. The biotechnology company has now raised its dividend nine consecutive years.

Amgen's next dividend will be paid on March 8, 2021, to all stockholders of record as of the close of business on February 15, 2021. A new annualized dividend rate of $7.04 per share yields 3.1% at a stock price of $228.

Since Amgen initiated a dividend in 2011, it has increased the dividend each year with the quarterly payout in 2019 up more than five-fold since its inception. Amgen currently pays an estimated $4.1 billion in dividends annually. The average dividend growth rate in the last five years is exactly 12 percent annually.

Amgen Inc. is a biotechnology company offering products for the treatment of illness in the areas of oncology/hematology, cardiovascular, inflammation, bone health, nephrology, and neuroscience.  Amgen operates in one business segment: human therapeutics. The company discovers, develops, manufactures and delivers various human therapeutics. Amgen was incorporated in California in 1986 and went public the next year in 1987. The first dividend was paid in 2011.