NEW YORK, April 30 (Reuters) - E-commerce titan

Amazon.com ( AMZN ) may be under increasing pressure to offer

investors a dividend, as it now finds itself one of the few

massive U.S. technology and growth companies not making regular

payouts to shareholders.

Google parent Alphabet last week became the latest

of the so-called Magnificent Seven group of market heavyweights

to start paying a dividend, after Meta Platforms ( META )

declared one in February. The announcements were followed by big

post-earnings gains in the shares of both companies, though they

were far from the only factor.

That has left Amazon ( AMZN ) and Tesla as the only

companies in the group that do not pay a dividend. Microsoft's ( MSFT )

payouts date back some 20 years, while Apple ( AAPL )

and Nvidia ( NVDA ) have been paying dividends for over a

decade.

Amazon ( AMZN ) will report quarterly results and hold a conference

call with analysts after the market closes on Tuesday, in the

midst an earnings season that has produced mixed reactions to

results by Big Tech companies.

"It certainly puts the spotlight on (Amazon ( AMZN )) because now

they're really the last one standing in terms of Big Tech not

paying a dividend," said Nicholas Colas, cofounder of DataTrek

Research.

"Dividends are representations of earnings power. So the

fact that the rest of Big Tech has now decided to be able to

exhibit earnings power and growth in earnings power with a

dividend, that leaves them very much isolated versus the rest of

the group," Colas said.

David Katz, chief investment officer of Matrix Asset

Advisors, said the dividend decisions by Amazon's ( AMZN ) peer group

could have some influence.

"They could reasonably say, 'OK, the bigger players like

Google, like Meta, have instated a dividend, we can do that as

well,'" said Katz, whose firm owns shares of both Alphabet and

Amazon ( AMZN ).

While corporate profits are ultimately seen as a far more

important driver of a company's share price, dividends could

increase a stock's shareholder base - though they may take time

to do so.

About $1 trillion was invested in dividend funds as of

September, according to Morningstar. However, megacaps such as

Meta and Alphabet may be off-limits to many of them, for now.

Many funds look for stocks that have dividend yields far

higher than those offered by dividend-paying members of the

Magnificent Seven, said Daniel Sotiroff, senior analyst at

Morningstar Research Services. A yield is the dividend paid per

share as a percentage of the current share price.

Meta shares, for example, currently yield 0.45% while

Alphabet yields 0.47%. That is below the 1.44% yield of the

overall S&P 500, and well below the yields of stocks such as

Pfizer ( PFE ) and 3M ( MMM ), which are both over 6%, according

to LSEG data.

Among other Magnificent Seven members, Microsoft ( MSFT ) yields

0.74%, Apple ( AAPL ) yields 0.57% and Nvidia ( NVDA ), whose shares are up 77% so

far this year, yields a paltry 0.02%.

Other funds focus on companies that have consistently

increased their dividends over time, and companies such as Meta

and Alphabet lack such track records as new initiators.

Apple ( AAPL ), however, was last year added to the popular Vanguard

Dividend Appreciation ETF, Sotiroff said. The

exchange-traded fund owned some $3.45 billion of the company's

shares as of the end of March, its second-biggest holding.

On the other hand, actively managed funds not bound by such

restrictions could more immediately hop on board the shares of a

company that just announced a dividend, Sotiroff said.

Or, "it might be individual investors that like it now

because it is making a payout," he said.