A regular dividend is the ongoing payment a board intends to keep making. A special dividend is extra — surplus cash after a good year, or the proceeds of selling part of the business — and it comes with no promise of a repeat. Any one-off distribution like that can make a share's trailing yield look spectacular for a year.
The data feed the app uses doesn't label specials, so the app judges from the numbers. When the Estimated Dividends chart repeats last year, it leaves out an extra payment on top of the usual schedule that's at least one and a half times anything the holding paid in the two years before, and it cuts a payment that's at least three times the same payment in each of the past three years back to last year's normal amount. Anything less clear-cut is repeated, so a modest special can still turn up next year, and your trailing Annual Dividend counts every special for twelve months. When a payment looks far bigger than a holding's usual, check the company's announcement. If it's a special, take it out of your mental run-rate — and don't read the jump in yield as a raise.
Trailing yield counts both. Next year, only the first bar is likely to come back.
Educational content only. It is not personal financial advice.