Stock prices go up and down, managers don’t always invest the excess cash in prudent way. Dividends force organizations to think about their capital deployment, cash flow. Personally, in some accounts I aim for 10% return, and that is based on 2~3% from dividends, 2~3% from options and the rest from cap-ex gains. Here is a post on one of my REIT holdings where the stock has not done much, but with dividends I am able to have healthy CAGR