Albemarle Corporation

Albemarle is one of the world's largest producers of lithium, the metal at the heart of the batteries that power electric vehicles and grid storage, alongside bromine and catalyst businesses. Its fortunes rise and fall with the lithium price, which swung from euphoric highs to painful lows as supply caught up with the electric-vehicle boom, making earnings highly volatile. Albemarle has an unusually long history of consecutive dividend increases for a commodity producer, and it maintained the payout through the recent downturn. But with the lithium cycle depressed, that dividend now consumes a large share of shrunken profits, and its yield is thin. The result is a long track record shadowed by cyclical risk, which keeps the overall dividend profile below average.