Pfizer raised its quarterly dividend by 26% this week!

Early this week, Pfizer announced that it was raising its quarterly dividend by 26%, from 19 cents per share to 24 cents per share. With Pfizer currently trading at about $22.70 per share, its annual dividend payouts will be 96 cents, giving it a dividend yield of just over 4.2%! Even though Pfizer's stock (symbol: PFE) is trading around where it was in 1997, its forward PE is a mere 11, about than 1/5 of what it was in 1998.

Even if Pfizer's earnings don't accelerate in the next couple of years, it is still the 800-lb gorilla of the drug industry, generating billions of dollars in free cash flow and spending upwards of $7 billion on R&D annually. If nothing else, its dividend makes Pfizer look extremely attractive to me. Also, Pfizer has a long history of raising its divdends each year, so the annual dividend payouts should keep rising every year.

I think Pfizer's a steal at just $22.70 per share.