Meta’s surprise dividend announcement causes a 14% stock surge and makes CEO Zuckerberg billions of dollars richer.
Those following Facebook parent Meta’s shares were in for a nice surprise today as the social media conglomerates shares surged by 14% following its fourth quarter earnings and a day after the U.S. Senate grilled its CEO Mark Zuckerberg for having « blood on his hands » from illicit material on his firm’s social media platform. The share price surge saw Meta investors reward the firm after it declared its first dividend in history even as global advertisement spending slowed down in a tough macroeconomic environment. Meta’s fourth quarter results saw it report a sizable 25% revenue growth that was accompanied by an equally strong 201% profit surge, and the dividend announcement came without any leaks to the press reporting about it prior to today’s earnings release.Mark Zuckerberg Awards Investors With Juicy Dividend After Meta Profit More Than Doubles In Q4 2023
During Meta’s fourth quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg, like Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai, led his remarks by focusing on artificial intelligence. Like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, Meta is also a major player in AI, and the firm made news waves last month after Zuckerberg shared that his firm would buy hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs this year for his AI models.
Before his comments though, Meta had announced a 50 cent dividend for its Class A and Class B shares.
