Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks in the course of the Meta Connect occasion at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 27, 2023.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
Meta introduced on Thursday that it’ll pay a quarterly dividend for the primary time, and that it had licensed an expanded $50 billion share buyback program.
The Facebook proprietor can pay a 50 cent per share dividend, becoming a member of friends Apple, Microsoft and Oracle, all of which pay common dividends. The board intends to difficulty a money dividend on a quarterly foundation, “subject to market conditions.”
Meta introduced the information concurrently with its fourth-quarter earnings, the place the corporate reported a powerful beat on the highest and backside strains.
Shares rose greater than 12% on the earnings report and the information of the buyback and dividend.
The dividend will probably be paid in March to all shareholders of file as of Feb. 22.
The expanded share buyback authorization comes simply two weeks after Meta shares eclipsed their 2021 excessive, breaking by means of $378. The firm had $30.9 billion out there for share repurchases as of December 2023.
With a present market capitalization of $1 trillion, the expanded authorization is round 5% of shares excellent.
Neither Amazon nor Alphabet have ever paid a dividend. Microsoft issued its first dividend in 2003, whereas Oracle first issued one in 2009.
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