New Delhi, Aug. 15 -- For many investors, dividends are among the clearest ways a company returns profits to shareholders. That makes high dividend-paying companies especially attractive.

But there is a more revealing question than simply asking which companies pay the highest dividends: which companies distribute the largest share of the profits they earn?

That is where the dividend payout ratio comes in. It measures the percentage of a company's profit distributed to shareholders as dividends.

A high payout ratio can signal strong cash generation and shareholder-friendly capital allocation. But an unusually high payout can also reflect limited reinvestment opportunities, a one-off distribution or a mature business. The number, theref...