Between sipping your morning coffee and chowing down on lunch, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth decided to take a wild ride, shooting up by a whopping $28 billion. The brain behind Meta, already swimming in a pool of wealth with over $140 billion, hit the jackpot thanks to Meta’s shares going through the roof following the announcement of their brand-new cash dividend program.
Friday turned into a stock market rollercoaster as Meta’s (META) shares soared by an eye-popping 20%, all thanks to the news of a quarterly dividend. This dividend, set at $0.50 per share, is scheduled to rain down on shareholders’ parade on March 26, provided they were in the record books as of February 22.
Now, let’s talk numbers. Zuckerberg, the Meta maestro, is sitting on a cool 350 million shares of the company, or so says the US Securities and Exchange Commission. If he decides to play it cool without dabbling in more stock shenanigans and the dividends keep rolling in at the same rate, we’re looking at a yearly windfall of about $700 million for Zuckerberg.
But hey, let’s not get too carried away with the financial fiesta. Behind the scenes, there’s a bit of drama for Meta’s stock. Zuckerberg, along with other social media big shots, recently had a sit-down with the Senate Judiciary Committee. They had to answer some tough questions about the impact their products have on the younger crowd. The spotlight was on internal Meta documents spilled the beans about how the company values a teen user’s lifetime at a cool $270. There were also some inquiries about Meta’s transparency in cashing in on user data.
In the midst of this scrutiny, Zuckerberg stepped up with an apology to the parents in the room, sharing a heartfelt “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through.” He pledged that Meta would keep investing big bucks and work on industry-wide efforts to spare families from the kind of trouble they’ve faced. So, it’s not all champagne and celebrations in Meta-land.
