Icahn Enterprises L.P. IEP

Selling assets can keep a dividend alive for a while, but every sale shrinks the pool of what remains. These six companies have been leaning on divestitures to fund their payouts, and the list of things left to sell is getting shorter.

Carl Icahn’s firm and some other investors were accused Monday in a Delaware lawsuit of illegally colluding in arbitrage bets to challenge private equity firm Silver Lake’s $25 billion buyout of Endeavor Group Holdings Inc.

A fat dividend yield can signal a stock worth buying or a company quietly falling apart, and telling the difference requires looking past the payout itself at the cash flow, debt load, and share price collapse hiding behind the number.