Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES) shares have long been popular among ASX passive income investors due to their reliable, twice-yearly dividend payouts.

Adding to the appeal, the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) retailer – whose subsidiaries include household names like Bunnings Warehouse, Kmart Australia, Officeworks and Priceline – pays fully franked dividends. That means you can likely hold onto more of that passive income when it comes time to pay the ATO its dues.

And over the past four years those dividends have been trending modestly higher.

If you were attracted to those dividends, you could have bought Wesfarmers shares on 15 January 2021 for $50.23 apiece.

So, $5,000 would have netted you 99 shares with enough pocket money left over for a pizza.

On Friday, those same shares closed the day trading for $71.83 apiece. Meaning those 99 shares are now worth $7,111.17. Or a tidy $2,111.17 profit. Plus that pizza you ate four year ago.

That's the capital gains.

Now, what about that passive income?

Targeting Wesfarmers shares for passive income

If you'd bought Wesfarmers share in January 2021, you'd have been eligible to receive the past eight fully franked dividend payments. Including the recent final dividend payout of $1.07 a share, which would have landed in your bank account on 9 October.

All told, those eight dividend payments total $7.47 a share.

Your 99 shares, purchased for $5,000 in January 2021, then will already have delivered $739.53 in passive income.

If we add that back into the present value of those shares, which is $7,111.17, the accumulated value of those 99 shares is $7,850.7.

Or a gain of 57% on your initial investment.

What's been happening with Wesfarmers stock?

The FY 2024 final dividend payment of $1.07 a share was up 3.9% from FY 2023. And it marked the biggest passive income payout delivered by the ASX 200 retail stock since the 2018 spinoff of Coles Group Ltd (ASX: COL).

This was spurred by some solid FY 2024 earnings results.

Among the highlights of the past financial year, Wesfarmers reported a 1.5% year on year increase in revenue to $44.2 billion.

On the bottom line, net profit increased 3.7% to $2.56 billion.

Wesfarmers' full-year dividend payments were $1.98 per share, fully franked, up 3.7% from the prior year.

For passive income investors who prefer to reinvest those dividends rather than spend them as they come, Wesfarmers offers a dividend reinvestment plan (DRP).