Warren Buffett showed it to everyone again last year: while the S&P 500 lost around 20 percent last year, his investment company Berkshire Hathaway was able to gain around three percent.

So it has beaten the market once again, and at a really complicated time.

Much has been written about his investment strategies, but little has gone unnoticed about how much money he's made from dividends.

Franz Nestler

Editor in Business.

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A dividend is the profit that a listed company pays out to the shareholders - you benefit almost twice from a possible business success, once through price increases and through the dividend.

Buffett can currently collect $ 4.84 billion in dividends annually.

It is particularly noteworthy that three quarters of the dividend gains come from just six companies.

For small investors, it may be worth looking at the dividend yield: It's calculated by dividing the dividend by the share price and multiplying it by 100.

The higher the value, the better.

Buffett's largest position is Chevron. Annual dividend income is $964 million.

The energy company's stock has been bought relatively aggressively by Buffett and his team over the past two years.

The newfound fondness for energy stocks is a bet that oil and gas prices will stay elevated.

The chances are good: Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has shaken up the global energy markets.

In addition, there is a lack of investments by the large energy companies in drilling and exploration, so that the supply is likely to remain limited, which is likely to lead to high prices.

Chevron is a solid investment in other respects, too. The oil multinational was able to reduce its debt by 68 percent last year to just $8.2 billion.

This gives the group a lot of financial freedom.

He often used this for dividends: the average dividend yield over the past five years was almost 4.3 percent, most recently it was around 3 percent.

If Buffett makes another purchase here, he could be looking at an annual dividend of more than $1 billion.

The second big dividend holding is Bank of America, with nearly $909 million in annual dividend income.

Buffett loves bank stocks and has supported Bank of America on a number of occasions.

Buffett likes to bet on bank stocks because they also benefit greatly from protracted periods of economic recovery: If loans and deposits increase, bank profits also increase, which in turn can lead to an increase in dividends.

It's not uncommon for the financial institution to pay out $20 billion to $25 billion in dividends a year.

The rate hikes by the American Federal Reserve have also had a positive impact on Bank of America's results.

The dividend yield is currently around 2.5 percent.