A: You can call the company and ask, or look it up online or in newspaper stock listings.

Instead of the dividend itself, many stock listings include the dividend yield, which is the percentage of the stock price being paid out annually in dividends. If there’s a yield, it means there’s a dividend.

To figure out the dividend from the yield, just take the yield and multiply it by the stock price.

Let’s say that Farm Dogs Inc. (ticker: BINGO) is trading at $80 per share and has a yield of 2 percent (which is 0.02). Multiply 0.02 by 80 and you’ll get 1.60, meaning that the company is paying out $1.60 each year in dividends per share. (Companies often pay dividends quarterly, so this would be 40 cents per quarter.)

If you’re looking for promising stocks that pay significant dividends, grab a free trial of our Motley Fool Income Investor newsletter at www.incomeinvestor.fool.com.

Ask the Fool: What are ADRs? – K.T., Kannapolis, N.C.

A: American Depositary Receipts enable us to easily buy and sell shares of foreign stocks that don’t normally trade on U.S. exchanges. Without them, if you wanted to buy stock in Toyota, you’d have to convert your dollars into yen and then somehow buy shares on the Japanese exchange.

Through ADRs, shares of Toyota are held by an American financial institution overseas, and you can trade shares with U.S. dollars. ADR holders are entitled to dividends and capital gains but have no voting rights.

Other ADRs include Unilever, Nokia, Sony, Reuters, Barclays, Siemens AG, Alcatel-Lucent, National Grid, Carnival, Cadbury-Schweppes, Royal Dutch Shell, GlaxoSmithKline and Nestle.

My dumbest investment: After getting burned by the recent Internet bubble, I had the opportunity to invest in a stock right after its initial public offering.

It was supposed to open at around $85 but instead opened around $100. It was hyped to be the next big thing, with astronomical price potential, but I was not going to get fooled again. So I passed.

The stock: Google. Enough said. – Marjory, Florida.

The Fool responds: Steering clear was a reasonable thing to do. Initial public offerings can be volatile, with their prices often hyped to steep levels, only to sink in relatively short order once the shares begin trading.

You can usually find other bargains among companies that have been public for many years – you don’t need IPOs to make you rich.

That said, Google has done well for many investors, at least the early ones. It surpassed $700 per share in late 2007, though it has shed several hundred dollars per share in 2008. Some might want to take a closer look now, and wait for possibly lower prices.

Foolish trivia: I was founded in Arkansas in 1962. I introduced pharmacy, auto service and jewelry divisions in 1978, and greeters and one-hour photo labs in 1983. I topped $1 billion in sales in 1979 and took in that much in a day in 2002.

In 1983 I launched a club named after my founder. With 1.9 million workers, I’m one of America’s biggest employers. I sport more than 100 distribution centers, along with 60,000-plus vehicles and some 8,000 drivers.

I’m the world’s largest retailer, with annual sales of $375 billion and more than 6,500 stores. Who am I?

Answer to last week’s trivia: In 1982, my founder, a former textile businessman and vineyard owner named Ely, bought a small golf club company called Hickory Stick USA, aiming to make “demonstrably superior and pleasingly different” clubs. A former high-end pool-cue designer created my famous line of clubs named after World War II artillery. My brands include Odyssey, Top-Flite and Ben Hogan.

I rake in more than $1 billion in sales annually, keeping more than $50 million as earnings. In market share, I’ve been the No. 1 brand for irons for more than 10 years. I also sell balls, shoes and more.

Who am I? Answer: Callaway Golf.

The Motley Fool take: It’s a big deal, as transactions in the forest-products industry go. International Paper (NYSE: IP) plans to pay about $6 billion in cash to Weyerhaeuser (NYSE: WY) in exchange for its packaging, containerboard and recycling businesses.

But since the buyer will realize an estimated $1.4 billion income tax benefit from the deal, the company’s net outlay for the acquired assets will be closer to $4.6 billion. The transaction will likely close by the third quarter of the year.

Weyerhaeuser has been trimming ancillary businesses lately, attempting to concentrate on its wood products, real estate and homebuilding core. In 2007, for instance, it sold its fine-paper business to Canada’s Domtar (NYSE: UFS).

And for its part, International Paper has undergone a substantial makeover. Three years ago, the company began selling its wood products, timberlands and coated-paper businesses. In the process, it slashed its net debt by almost two-thirds. It’s now concentrating on packaging and uncoated paper.

Through its deal with Weyerhaeuser, the company will roughly double the amount of revenue generated from packaging.

It’s worth keeping an eye on International Paper. Without even taking into account the effects of the recent transaction, the company sports a reasonable valuation, expected double-digit per-share earnings growth over the next two years and a 3.5 percent dividend yield.

The Motley Fool is written by Tom and David Gardner for Universal Press Syndicate. The Motley Fool tells the truth about investing. Reach the Gardners at fool@fool.com, or by regular mail to Motley Fool, PO Box 19529, Alexandria, VA 22320-0529.

CORPORATE Bankruptcy 101

If you’re considering investing in a company in or near bankruptcy, think twice.

A company files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (usually reluctantly) when it’s having trouble paying its bills. Under Chapter 11, it can continue to operate while it reorganizes.

With any luck, it will get its act together and become stronger than before, as Texaco did in the late 1980s.

But if the company can’t generate enough capital to pay off its creditors, it will likely end up in Chapter 7 – getting liquidated.

In Chapter 11, the company remains in possession of its assets, under the administration of a court-appointed trustee. It must file a plan of reorganization with the bankruptcy court.

If any creditors are to receive less than full value for their claims, they’ll have the right to vote on their acceptance. After the vote, the court can accept or reject the plan.

So the company has some flexibility, but if it tries to deal too harshly with creditors, its plan isn’t likely to be approved.

In most cases, the company will have to sell off assets to raise money to pay creditors. The proceeds usually won’t be enough to pay all prioritized creditors in full, so the creditors might accept a reduced amount of money and/or some stock in the new, reorganized company.

If you notice much attention being paid to creditors and little to shareholders, you’re not imagining things. Holders of common stock in the company aren’t anywhere near the front of the line. They’re behind debt-holders, merchant creditors, trustees, employees, the IRS and even preferred shareholders. Even insiders’ stock stakes usually end up worthless.

Some companies in Chapter 11 do emerge from it and survive (such as Western Union and Delta Airlines) – but many don’t (think Enron, Worldcom and Polaroid).

And with those that do, it’s rare for shareholders to benefit, as they’re last in line to receive something from the bankruptcy.

Steer clear of companies in trouble.

The Motley Fool