Valued at a market cap of almost $90 billion, Canadian Natural Resources (TSX:CNQ) is among the largest oil and gas companies in the world. In the last 10 years, CNQ stock has returned 194% to shareholders. However, if we adjust for dividend reinvestments, cumulative returns are closer to 386%.
Despite these inflation-beating returns, the TSX dividend stock is down 23.6% below all-time highs, which allows you to buy a blue-chip stock at a lower multiple. Let’s see how much you can earn via dividends if you purchase 1,000 shares of Canadian Natural Resources in December 2025.
To buy 1,000 shares of CNQ stock, you will have to invest $43,000 in December 2025. This investment will help you earn $2,350 in annual dividends or $196 in monthly dividends, which translates to a yield of almost 5.5%.
| COMPANY | RECENT PRICE | NUMBER OF SHARES | DIVIDEND | TOTAL PAYOUT | FREQUENCY |
| CNQ | $43 | 1,000 | $0.5875 | $587.5 | Quarterly |
Canadian investors should understand the long-term benefits of investing in dividend growth stocks. For instance, if you purchased 1,000 shares of CNQ stock in 2015 for $14,500, you would have earned $460 in annual dividends.
Over the last 10 years, the effective yield of CNQ stock has risen from 3.2% to 23.5%, which is exceptional. Let’s see if you should own the blue-chip energy stock in your dividend portfolio right now.
The bull case of investing in CNQ stock
Canadian Natural Resources is a diversified energy giant that operates a broad portfolio of income-generating assets. It produces more than 1.6 million barrels of oil equivalent (BoE/d) across natural gas, light crude, heavy crude, bitumen, and synthetic crude oil.
This balance offers protection against commodity price swings while providing the flexibility to allocate capital to the highest-return projects.
CNQ holds roughly 27 million acres of land with about 10,000 premium drilling locations across North America’s top plays. Importantly, Canadian Natural has engineered a fundamental shift toward long-life, low-decline assets that require minimal maintenance capital.
The company’s corporate decline rate is just 12%, helping it generate predictable cash flows across business cycles. CNQ’s low decline rate is tied to its oil sands operations, which account for 56% of total production.
The TSX heavyweight operates world-class mining and upgrading facilities at Horizon and Athabasca Oil Sands Project with a combined capacity of 592,000 barrels per day. These assets produce zero-decline barrels for decades with no reserve risk.
Canadian Natural’s growth runway remains robust as it has identified potential to add 745,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day through conventional drilling, thermal expansion, and mining projects.
On the conventional side, multilateral drilling technology has transformed heavy oil economics, with the company now drilling wells 30% longer than three years ago at 9% lower cost per meter. Production from these wells has increased sixfold to 45,000 barrels per day.
Thermal operations offer another 210,000 barrels per day of expansion potential through projects like Pike 2 and Jackfish brownfield expansions at capital efficiencies between $22,000 and $40,000 per flowing barrel.
Mining expansions at Jackpine and Horizon’s North Mine could add 240,000 barrels per day at $50,000 to $60,000 per barrel, highly competitive metrics for zero-decline production.
Is CNQ stock still undervalued?
Analysts tracking CNQ stock forecasts adjusted earnings per share to grow from $3.38 in 2025 to $7.27 in 2029. If CNQ stock trades at 12 times forward earnings, which is in line with its five-year average, it could gain 100% in the next three years. If we adjust for dividends, cumulative returns could be closer to 120%.
CNQ maintains net debt to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization of 0.9 times while paying a 5% dividend yield.
Management estimates sustaining capital of just $9 to $10 per barrel annually, leaving substantial room for growth investment and shareholder returns across commodity cycles.
