The One Dividend Stock to Buy and Hold Forever in 2025

Forget chasing meme stocks—this dividend powerhouse delivers real wealth generation.

Steady Cash Flow Machine

While crypto markets swing wildly, this stock provides predictable returns that compound year after year. No sleepless nights watching charts—just consistent dividend deposits hitting your account.

Built to Withstand Economic Storms

Survived every market cycle since the dot-com bubble. Pays dividends through recessions, inflation spikes, and even that time your altcoin portfolio dropped 80% overnight.

The Forever Hold Strategy

Reinvest dividends automatically. Watch positions grow while traditional finance advisors still try to understand what a blockchain actually does. Financial independence arrives quietly—not with Lambo dreams but with compounding mathematics.

Because sometimes the most revolutionary investment strategy is just buying something solid and not touching it for decades—a concept that would give most crypto traders an existential crisis.

A steady, reliable business

AbbVie is a pharmaceutical leader that develops and markets novel medicines. This industry is about as defensive as they come: People need drugs, no matter how well -- or how poorly -- the economy is doing. Even during the worst recessions, physicians continue to prescribe them, and patients continue to purchase them. AbbVie's own portfolio encompasses products in several therapeutic areas, including immunology, oncology, neuroscience, eye care, and more.

Considering many of its therapies treat serious, chronic, or even life-threatening conditions, which sometimes require long-term prescriptions, AbbVie generates consistent revenue and profits, which helps support its dividend program.

Image source: Getty Images.

AbbVie can overcome challenges

Despite its steady business, AbbVie does encounter headwinds. Like all drugmakers, AbbVie has to deal with the occasional patent cliff, as well as clinical or regulatory setbacks. The way the company has responded to that in the past can tell us a lot about the strength of its underlying business.

In 2023, AbbVie lost U.S. patent exclusivity for Humira, an immunology medicine that was its biggest growth driver and best-selling product.Although revenue and earnings initially declined, the company has since rebounded and is moving in the right direction again.

Importantly, AbbVie did not cut its payouts while it dealt with that. Overcoming a major patent cliff takes both planning and execution. AbbVie planned ahead: It developed products internally, such as Rinvoq, an immunosuppressant, and licensed some from other drugmakers, including Rova-T, a cancer medicine and Skyrizi, another immunology product. It also made a major acquisition, buying out Allergan for $63 billion in 2020.

How did these moves pan out? Rova-T turned out to be a flop -- the medicine never saw the light of day. However, Skyrizi and Rinvoq are now AbbVie's biggest growth drivers. The Allergan acquisition helped the company diversify its lineup and pipeline, providing growth drivers such as Vraylar, an antipsychotic medicine, and its Botox franchise.

Skyrizi and Rinvoq should continue increasing their sales well into the next decade, but what will AbbVie do after that?

If history is any indication, the company will implement a similar strategy to the one that helped it MOVE beyond Humira. The drugmaker is already at it. Recent licensing deals and acquisitions have improved its pipeline.

AbbVie is entering the weight loss market through an agreement with Denmark-based Gubra A/S for GUB014295, an investigational weight management therapy. The transaction cost AbbVie an up-front payment of $350 million, with the potential for an additional $1.9 billion in clinical milestones and future royalties on sales.

Elsewhere, AbbVie recently acquired Capstan Therapeutics, a company developing medicines for autoimmune diseases, for approximately $2.1 billion in cash. In addition, AbbVie has a DEEP pipeline of its own, with dozens of ongoing programs that should eventually yield brand-new approvals or label expansions.

The dividend is safe

AbbVie has an impressive dividend track record, considering the time it spent under the wing of, its former parent company. Factoring that in, AbbVie is a Dividend King (a company that has raised its payouts for at least 50 consecutive years), as AbbVie's current streak stands at 53 years.

Even beyond the legacy from Abbott, the drugmaker has significantly hiked its dividends since it became a stand-alone, publicly traded company in 2013. Further, AbbVie's forward yield of 3% is pretty high -- the average for the(SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) is a meager 1.3%.

Lastly, the company's cash payout ratio remains reasonable at 61.8%. AbbVie's excellent dividend program, robust underlying operations, and ability to develop new medicines continually and overcome patent cliffs make it a top dividend pick for the long term.