By noon on Friday, Meta was on track for a record. Not just a record-high for the shares, but a record for the single-best day in market history.
The 21% surge in the stock translated into a $210 billion market cap gain (give or take).
That’d be the largest one-day value creation event in US history.
As the figure shows, Meta’s February 2, 2024 rally is eclipsed only by the PetroChina IPO.
Notably, Meta also owns two of the 10 largest one-day value destruction events on record, a $70 billion swoon in October of 2022, just before the shares bottomed, and an infamous quarter-trillion dollar collapse two years ago, almost to the day.
As I quipped about Meta’s dividend, investors are now being bribed on a quarterly basis to look the other way as Mark Zuckerberg plows resources into 2021’s pop culture craze.
Jokes aside (and I say that to set up yet another joke), the only thing investors like more than a redoubled commitment to buybacks and the institution of regular cash payments, is layoffs. And Mark laid off a lot of people during his “year of efficiency.”
Zuckerberg’s net worth rose by almost $30 billion on Friday to a record high exceeding Bill Gates’s fortune. As Bloomberg noted, Zuckerberg’s also poised to benefit handsomely from the dividend. Specifically, his annual payouts should be around $700 million.
Say what you will about Zuck, but he took the time and made the effort to learn enough Chinese to communicate with his wife-to-be’s Chinese (only) speaking grandmother, specifically to tell her that he was going to marry Priscilla. 🙂
“Bribed” is such an accurate word to describe what’s happening. And paying a piddly dividend will, as U know, allow all funds that mandate investing only in dividend paying stocks to become buyers, thereby reducing downside volatility in Meta stock and thereby elevating its multiple. I used to think nuclear weapons will destroy humanity. But perhaps its social media…particularly its corrosive effect on children’s minds.