Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) investors continue to reap rewards as the stock extended its multi-day rally, setting a new all-time high.
Notably, the social media giant is emerging as the top performer among the “Magnificent Seven” stocks in 2025, surging nearly 23% year to date. At the close of the last trading session, META was priced at $736.67, finishing the day up over 1%.
Meta Platforms dividend payment
Beyond the impressive stock gains, shareholders have even more to celebrate as Meta announced changes to its relatively young dividend program.
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Specifically, the firm reinforced its financial strength by revealing an increase in its quarterly dividend for the first quarter of 2025.
The decision will result in a 5% rise from the previous dividend, amounting to $0.525 per share for Class A and Class B common stock. The dividend will be paid on March 26, 2025.
With this new rate, shareholders on record by March 14, 2025, will receive an annualized dividend of $2.10 per share, up from $2.00. The stock’s recent price offers a dividend yield of approximately 0.29%.
Since going public, Meta has historically not paid dividends; instead, it has focused on growth and reinvesting profits. However, this changed when the company initiated a quarterly dividend of $0.50 per share in 2024 before the latest increase.
Meta earnings
The changes have emerged after the company’s impressive fourth-quarter 2024 earnings. During the quarter, the Facebook parent company posted revenue of $48.39 billion, beating the expected $47.04 billion and EPS of $8.02, significantly higher than the forecasted $6.77.
Despite this strong performance, Meta’s first-quarter revenue guidance of $39.5 billion to $41.8 billion came in slightly below analysts’ expectations of $41.73 billion at the midpoint.
Meta is banking significantly on artificial intelligence (AI) and its social media business to spur further growth across 2025, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated will be a ‘defining year.’ To this end, the California-based giant intends to invest $60 billion to $65 billion in capital expenditures and grow its AI teams.
Already, Zuckerberg has noted that Meta is building a data center that aims to bring online 1 gigawatt of compute and will have more than 1.3 million GPUs by the end of the year.
Wall Street bullish on META stock
Meanwhile, Wall Street analysts have also expressed a bullish stance on META stock. For instance, on January 30, Raymond James analyst Josh Beck increased Meta Platforms’ price target to $800 from the previous $725 while reiterating a ‘Strong Buy.’ The revision reflects Beck’s optimism about Meta’s potential in AI and its impact on the company’s revenue.
On the same date, Citi reaffirmed its ‘Buy’ rating on Meta, maintaining a $753 price target based on the possibility of the company benefiting from DeepSeek’s R1 AI model, which was trained with fewer resources. Analyst Ronald Josey praised R1’s open-source approach, which he noted could enhance efficiency for other AI models like Llama.
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