AGNC (NASDAQ: AGNC), one of the world's largest mortgage real estate investment trusts (mREITs), pays a massive forward dividend yield of 13.6%. Should investors put $1,000 into this stock to generate decades of monthly passive income, or does it come with some hidden risks?
AGNC purchases mortgages and mortgage-backed securities (MBS), collects interest from those investments, and pays out at least 90% of its taxable income as dividends to maintain a lower tax rate. It allocates 89% of its $97.2 billion portfolio to Agency MBS assets (backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Ginnie Mae) to protect itself from another housing market crash.
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To generate stable profits, AGNC must earn enough interest from its long-term MBS to cover its ongoing purchases of short-term MBS. To generate more cash to buy more MBS, it sells its own MBS to counterparties and agrees to buy them back at a set price plus interest at a future date in "repo transactions." It also repeatedly dilutes its investors by issuing and selling more shares.
To maintain that balancing act, the Fed's short-term rates must stay lower than its long-term rates, and the housing market must remain stable. If the Fed's yield curve inverts (its short-term rates exceed its long-term rates) in a distressed market, AGNC's earnings will decline.
For AGNC's dividend to be sustainable, its net interest spread (the gap between the average yield it earns on its MBS and the costs of funding those purchases) must stay positive. That figure has hovered around 2% over the past year.
For 2026, analysts expect its EPS to rise 6% to $1.58, comfortably covering its forward dividend rate of $1.44 per share. However, its monthly dividend rate of $0.12 per share has remained unchanged since 2020. Before that, it cut its dividend (from $0.16) to deal with the pandemic.
Over the past 10 years, AGNC's stock has declined by 45% due to its increased share issuance and a series of macroeconomic shocks. But if we include its reinvested dividends, it generated an 88% total return. That's not too bad, but the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) delivered a total return of 320% during the same period.
If you invest $1,000 in AGNC today, you'll earn about $136 per year, divided into 12 monthly payments. That's a good stream of passive income, but the value of your principal could shrink over the next few decades and offset a large portion of those gains. Investors should clearly understand what AGNC does before assuming it can deliver a lifetime of passive income.
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Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
AGNC Investment Could Turn $1,000 Into Decades of Monthly Passive Income was originally published by The Motley Fool