Mark Zuckerberg will earn $700 million per yr through Meta’s latest quarterly dividend – an astronomical payout announced just someday after he faced outrage on Capitol Hill over a failure to guard children from online sex abuse and exploitation.
The 39-year-old tech tycoon’s payday stems from Meta’s plans disclosed late Thursday to pay a quarterly money dividend of fifty cents per share of common stock starting this March.
Since Zuckerberg owns about 350 million shares, he’ll rake in roughly $175 million per fiscal quarter before taxes, based on Bloomberg data – or $700 million annually.
The corporate also announced $50 billion in stock buybacks. Meta shares swelled greater than 16% in premarket trading Friday — a stock move that stands to send Zuckerberg’s wealth soaring by tens of billions of dollars more on Friday.
The windfall could further enrage critics who’ve argued for years that he has prioritized profits over child safety on Facebook and Instagram – despite warnings that youngsters are bombarded with disturbing content on topics like suicide and anorexia and disgusting messages from alleged predators.
Meta representatives didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
As of Friday morning, Zuckerberg ranked because the world’s fifth-richest person with an estimated net price of $142 billion, based on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth has increased by greater than $14 billion for the reason that start of this yr alone.
The dividend amounts to a serious surge in pay for Zuckerberg – who received $27.1 million in compensation in 2022, based on probably the most recent available disclosures. Much of that sum was tied to non-public security costs since his base salary is just $1.
Zuckerberg faced hours of harsh attacks from a Senate panel earlier this week – with Sen. Lindsey Graham declaring that Meta had products that were “killing people” and Sen. Dick Durbin referring to the issue of online child exploitation as a “crisis in America.”
During one particularly heated segment with Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, an embattled Zuckerberg surprised the room after he stood up from his seat, turned to face the parents of victims within the audience, and apologized, stating: “Nobody should undergo the things that your families have suffered.”
Critics weren’t convinced by the surprise apology. Latest Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez – whose state is suing Meta and Zuckerberg for failing to guard kids from alleged sex predators – blasted the mea culpa as “too little, too late” in an interview with The Post.
Meta has touted its efforts to enhance online safety — including billions in spending on platform security and the rollout last month of features blocking underage users from receiving direct messages from strangers.
Meta revealed plans to pay out its first-ever dividend after a blowout quarter by which the social media giant beat Wall Street’s expectations for revenue and greater than tripled its earnings in comparison with one yr ago.
The corporate’s profits have swelled since Zuckerberg ordered a companywide cost-cutting push. Meta’s global headcount was 67,317 as of Dec. 31, a decrease of twenty-two% from the previous yr, based on company filings.