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By Katie Paul and Yuvraj Malik
(Reuters) -Meta Platforms issued its first dividend days ahead of flagship social network Facebook's 20th anniversary, while reporting revenue and profit that beat expectations on robust ad sales in the holiday shopping period.
Shares soared more than 14% after the bell, pushing the company's stock market valuation up by more than $140 billion and extending a long recovery that saw Meta hit record highs in recent weeks for the first time in more than two years.
The after-hours gains alone amounted to more than quintuple the entire value of social media rival Snap Inc.
Meta, one of the tech sector's original unicorns, said its dividend would be 50 cents per share. It also announced it had authorized an additional $50 billion in share repurchases.
The social media giant is the first of its generation of internet juggernauts to issue a dividend, a milestone for a tech sector that has been dominated by the same handful of companies for well over a decade.
Founded in a college dorm room in 2004, it has grown into the world's biggest social media company, connecting more than 3 billion people and revolutionizing how they discover trends, communicate with their neighbors and engage with politics.
The company, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has also been accused of ignoring a multitude of harms on its path to growth, including violations of user privacy and incitements to violence.
Just a day before announcing results, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before the U.S. Senate about child safety online and compelled to apologize to parents of children who had experienced sexual abuses.
"You're never as good as they say when you're up, or as bad as they say when you're down. Just keep building and doing good work over long periods of time," he said on Thursday in a post on another Meta-owned app, Threads.
IMPRESSIVE QUARTER
Shares of Meta have steadily been climbing back this past year from a meltdown in 2022 that wiped out more than three-quarters of their one-time value, buoyed by investor excitement about artificial intelligence.
Its recovery has also been aided by a rebound in user growth and digital ad sales, as well as an austerity drive that saw it shed more than 21,000 employees since late 2022.
Revenue for the fourth quarter rose 25% to $40.1 billion, above the $39.2 billion analysts were expecting, according to LSEG data.
Net income rose more than 200% to $14 billion, or $5.33 per share, exceeding expectations of $4.97 per share, according to LSEG data.