Some companies hand part of their profit back to shareholders as cash every few months, while others keep every dollar to grow the business. For years the largest US internet companies sat firmly in the second group, so owning one paid off only if the share price went up.
That has started to change, and it raises practical questions that a price chart cannot answer. How big is the payment next to the share price, and which day do you need to own the stock to receive it? And if you hold the company through a token or a contract, does any of the cash reach you at all?
A dividend is a cash payment per share that a company's board declares, usually each quarter. Three dates decide who gets it: the day the board announces it, the day the list of owners is fixed and the day the cash is paid. Yield, payout ratio and buybacks then show how generous the payment is and how it fits with the other cash a company returns to its owners.
Meta Platforms joined the dividend payers in 2024, and crypto traders can reach its shares without a US broker. BloFin lists Meta as a token you can hold, traded on its METAX/USDT Spot market, and as a price contract, the METAUSDT Perpetual, and the two treat Meta's dividend in very different ways.
How much is Meta's dividend?
Meta's dividend is $0.525 a share each quarter, or $2.10 a year, paid on both its Class A and Class B shares. At the October 12, 2026 close of $742.96, that is a yield of 0.28%, worked out (source: Yahoo Finance META history). The board declared Meta's first dividend on February 1, 2024 and has raised it once since, by 5% in 2025.
The first dividend arrived with Meta's results for the fourth quarter of 2023. The board declared $0.50 a share, payable on March 26, 2024 to holders of record on February 22. Meta said it intended to pay one every quarter from then on, subject to market conditions and the board's approval (source: Meta Q4 2023 results). The same release added $50 billion to the amount Meta could spend buying back its own shares.
The only raise so far came a year later. On February 13, 2025 the board lifted the payment to $0.525 a share, a 5% increase on the prior dividend, payable on March 26, 2025 (source: Meta dividend increase). Every dividend since has stayed at that amount, paid equally on the Class A shares that trade as Meta stock and on Meta's unlisted Class B shares.
The most recent payment reached shareholders on Monday, September 28, 2026. The board declared it on September 10, for holders of record on September 21 (source: Meta dividend announcement). That brings the total Meta has paid to $5.675 a share across 11 payments.
Next to the share price, the dividend is a small part of what a Meta share returns. A move of 1% in the price, which Meta makes on many ordinary days, is worth more than three years of dividends. The dividend is one of several things that shape the share's value, and what moves Meta stock explains how results, spending plans and court rulings weigh on the price.
Meta's dividend history and payment dates
Meta has paid 11 quarterly dividends, from March 26, 2024 to September 28, 2026: four at $0.50 a share and seven at $0.525. Apart from the very first, each payment reached shareholders between seven and 12 days after the record date.
The record date is the day Meta checks its list of shareholders, and anyone on that list receives the payment. The declaration date is when the board announces the amount and the other two dates. Here is every Meta dividend so far, oldest first (source: Meta dividend announcements):
Declared | Record date | Paid | Amount per share |
|---|---|---|---|
February 1, 2024 | February 22, 2024 | March 26, 2024 | $0.50 |
May 30, 2024 | June 14, 2024 | June 26, 2024 | $0.50 |
September 5, 2024 | September 16, 2024 | September 26, 2024 | $0.50 |
December 5, 2024 | December 16, 2024 | December 27, 2024 | $0.50 |
February 13, 2025 | March 14, 2025 | March 26, 2025 | $0.525 |
May 29, 2025 | June 16, 2025 | June 26, 2025 | $0.525 |
September 11, 2025 | September 22, 2025 | September 29, 2025 | $0.525 |
December 3, 2025 | December 15, 2025 | December 23, 2025 | $0.525 |
February 12, 2026 | March 16, 2026 | March 26, 2026 | $0.525 |
May 28, 2026 | June 15, 2026 | June 25, 2026 | $0.525 |
September 10, 2026 | September 21, 2026 | September 28, 2026 | $0.525 |
The record and payment dates match Stock Analysis's history of Meta's dividends (source: Stock Analysis). The rhythm is regular: a declaration in early or mid February, late May, early September and early December, then payment in late March, late June, late September and late December.
That rhythm means the dividend rarely arrives on the same day as Meta's results. Only the first was declared alongside a results release, while every later one came in a short announcement of its own, often weeks after the results. If you follow Meta mainly through its quarterly reports, check Meta's investor relations press releases in those four declaration windows as well.
Ex-dividend date: When you need to own Meta shares
To receive a Meta dividend, you need to buy the shares by the close on the business day before the ex-dividend date, often shortened to ex-date. For Meta, the ex-date and the record date have fallen on the same day since mid-2024, so a buyer on the ex-date itself misses the payment and the seller keeps it.
The reason is settlement. A share you buy is only recorded as yours once the trade settles, and US stock trades have settled one business day after the trade since May 28, 2024, down from two (source: SEC). Meta's very first dividend shows the older rule, with an ex-date of February 21, 2024 and a record date one day later.
Say you wanted the September 2026 payment. The record date was Monday, September 21, so the ex-date was the same Monday, and the last day to buy was Friday, September 18. If you bought on the Friday and sold on the Monday morning, you would still have been paid $0.525 a share on September 28, because you were on the list of owners on the record date.
The share price usually opens lower on the ex-date by roughly the amount of the dividend, since new buyers no longer get it. At $0.525 against a price above $700, that drop is under 0.1% and easily hidden by an ordinary day's move. On September 21, 2026, the ex-date itself, the shares closed 11.3% above the previous close of $665.75, worked out (source: Yahoo Finance META history). Next to a move like that, buying just before the ex-date to collect $0.525 says little about how the trade turns out.
Meta's dividend yield over time
Meta's dividend yield is the yearly dividend divided by the share price, and it has fallen from 0.43% at the first ex-date in February 2024 to 0.28% in October 2026, worked out. The dividend rose 5% in that time, while the share price rose much faster, so each dollar of dividend became a smaller share of the price.
Dividend yield = yearly dividend per share ÷ share price × 100.
Applying it on five dates, with Meta's closing price each day from Yahoo Finance's history, shows how the yield has slid (source: Yahoo Finance META history).
Date | Yearly dividend rate | Meta's closing price | Dividend yield |
|---|---|---|---|
February 21, 2024, first ex-date | $2.00 | $468.03 | 0.43% |
March 14, 2025, first ex-date at the higher rate | $2.10 | $607.60 | 0.35% |
March 16, 2026, ex-date | $2.10 | $627.45 | 0.33% |
September 21, 2026, latest ex-date | $2.10 | $741.25 | 0.28% |
October 12, 2026, latest close | $2.10 | $742.96 | 0.28% |
The price climbed about 59% between the first ex-date and the October 12 close, against a 5% rise in the dividend, which is why the yield kept slipping even though the payment never fell.
A falling yield looks different if you already own the shares. If you had bought at $468.03 on February 21, 2024, the current $2.10 a year would pay you about 0.45% on what you spent, worked out, a figure known as the yield on cost. A new buyer at $742.96 gets 0.28%, because the same payment is spread over a higher price.
Meta's payout ratio from earnings and free cash flow
Meta's payout ratio, the share of its profit paid out as dividends, was 8.9% in 2025: $2.10 of dividends against diluted earnings of $23.49 a share (source: Meta Q4 2025 results). Against free cash flow, the payout rose from 9.7% in 2024 to 12.2% in 2025 and 20.5% in the first half of 2026, worked out from Meta's results (source: Meta Q4 2025 results) (source: Meta Q2 2026 results).
Free cash flow is the cash left from running the business after paying for data centers, servers and other equipment. It matters for a dividend because the dividend is paid in cash, while earnings include items such as tax charges and benefits that move no cash at all. Meta's diluted earnings were $23.86 a share in 2024 and $23.49 in 2025, so the earnings payout ratio barely moved, from 8.4% to 8.9% (source: Meta Q4 2025 results). The 2025 figure is held down by a one-time tax charge: Meta's tax rate for the year was 30%, and would have been 13% without it, so the payout ratio on the business's underlying earnings was lower still (source: Meta Q4 2025 results). The same earnings figure sits behind Meta's P/E ratio, which compares the share price with a year of earnings.
Free cash flow tells a sharper story, because Meta's AI spending ate into it:
Period | Paid in dividends | Free cash flow | Dividends as a share of free cash flow |
|---|---|---|---|
2024 | $5.1 billion | $52.1 billion | 9.7% |
2025 | $5.3 billion | $43.6 billion | 12.2% |
First half of 2026 | $2.7 billion | $13.2 billion | 20.5% |
Meta's full-year results supply the figures for 2024 and 2025 (source: Meta Q4 2025 results). The 2026 dividends are the $2.3 billion paid on Class A shares and $360 million on Class B shares in the six months to June 30 (source: Meta Form 10-Q for Q2 2026). Free cash flow for the half was $13.2 billion, of which $784 million came in the second quarter (source: Meta Q2 2026 results), and each ratio is worked out from those totals.
A ratio near 20% still leaves room: after dividends, about $10.5 billion of the half's free cash flow remained, worked out, and none of it went on buybacks. In the second quarter alone, though, dividends of $1.4 billion came to more than the quarter's free cash flow (source: Meta Q2 2026 results). Meta's AI capex and cash flow explains where that spending goes.
Dividends and buybacks at Meta
Meta returns far more cash through buybacks than through dividends. In 2024 it spent $30.1 billion buying back shares against $5.1 billion in dividends, and in 2025 $26.3 billion against $5.3 billion (source: Meta Q4 2025 results). In the first half of 2026 it bought back no shares, with $25.0 billion of its authorization unused on June 30 (source: Meta Form 10-Q for Q2 2026).
A buyback returns cash in a different way from a dividend. Meta buys its own Class A shares in the market and retires them, so each remaining share is a slightly bigger slice of the company, and only the sellers receive cash. Every holder who keeps their shares gains from that, and who owns Meta shows who the largest holders are. In 2025 Meta bought back and retired 40 million Class A shares (source: Meta Form 10-K for 2025).
Period | Paid in dividends | Spent on buybacks | Dividends as a share of the total |
|---|---|---|---|
2024 | $5.1 billion | $30.1 billion | 14.4% |
2025 | $5.3 billion | $26.3 billion | 16.9% |
First half of 2026 | $2.7 billion | none | 100% |
The full-year amounts come from Meta's results for 2025 (source: Meta Q4 2025 results), and the 2026 figures from its quarterly filing (source: Meta Form 10-Q for Q2 2026). Each share of the total is worked out.
The difference in 2026 shows how the two payouts behave. Meta's 10-K says the buyback program has no end date and does not commit Meta to buy any set dollar amount (source: Meta Form 10-K for 2025). Meta can slow it or stop it without announcing a cut. A dividend works the other way: once declared, the amount and dates are fixed, and lowering it would be news. That difference fits what happened as AI spending rose: buybacks stopped, while the $0.525 dividend kept arriving every quarter.
Worked example: A year of Meta dividends on 10 shares
Ten Meta shares held through the four payments from December 2025 to September 2026 earned $21.00 in dividends before tax, at $0.525 a share each time. Bought at the October 12, 2026 close of $742.96, the same 10 shares would cost $7,429.60, worked out.
Here is the year, payment by payment. You receive $5.25 on December 23, 2025, March 26, June 25 and September 28, 2026, as long as you bought the shares by the business day before each ex-date. The four amounts add up to $21.00, and your broker may withhold tax from each one, depending on where you live and the account you use.
The same sum with $1,000 shows how the dividend scales. At $742.96 a share, $1,000 buys about 1.35 shares, which would earn about $2.83 a year at $0.525 a quarter. Meta's dividend adds a little income on top of the share's price moves, and the price moves decide almost all of what you make or lose.
Tokenized Meta handles the same payment through your balance. Tokenized Meta (METAX) is an xStock issued by Backed, and its documentation says the issuer does not pass on cash. Instead "the dividend is reinvested into additional shares of the same stock", net of withholding tax, and holder balances rise in proportion (source: xStocks dividends and stock splits).
On the September 2026 dividend, $0.525 against the $741.25 close on the ex-date comes to about 0.071% more Meta per token before withholding, worked out. Whether METAX pays Meta's dividend covers when and how the token balance changes. The perpetual is different again, since under BloFin's stock futures notice a contract carries no right to Meta's dividends (source: BloFin stock futures notice), as the META perpetual on BloFin explains.
If you want Meta's dividend to keep adding to what you hold, the token is the route that carries it. Tokenized Meta's live price sits on the METAX/USDT Spot page, while the contract's price and funding rate are shown on the METAUSDT Perpetual page.
Meta's third-quarter results and the next dividend
Meta's third-quarter 2026 results are due on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, after the US market close, a date Meta announced on October 12. The dividend is a separate decision: in 2024 and 2025 the board declared the fourth-quarter dividend on December 5 and December 3, weeks after the October results.
The date comes from Meta's own notice (source: Meta third-quarter results date). For a dividend holder, the report matters because it shows the cash behind the payment. Two figures carry most of the information: free cash flow for the quarter, and whether Meta bought back any shares after two quarters with none.
Each quarterly dividend costs Meta about $1.4 billion (source: Meta Q2 2026 results), so free cash flow above that figure means the business paid for it, while a shortfall means it came from cash Meta already held or borrowed. Buybacks showing up again in the cash flow statement would mean Meta found room to return more. Reading the report itself, from revenue to the spending guide, is covered in Meta's earnings explained.
Looking to gain exposure to Meta? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and go to the METAX/USDT Spot trading page or the METAUSDT Perpetual trading page.
Frequently asked questions
Is Meta a dividend aristocrat?
Meta is far too new a dividend payer to qualify. The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats are companies that have raised their dividend for more than 25 years in a row (source: Corporate Finance Institute). Meta paid its first dividend in March 2024 and has raised it once, in February 2025, so its record of increases is a single year long.
Did Facebook pay a dividend before 2024?
Facebook paid no cash dividend in its years as a listed company, and the first came only in 2024, under the Meta name. Its annual report says that its board began declaring quarterly cash dividends in 2024 (source: Meta Form 10-K for 2025). Its annual report for 2022 says the company had never declared or paid cash dividends on its capital stock (source: Meta Form 10-K for 2022).
How many Meta shares do you need to make $1,000 a month in dividends?
About 5,714 shares, worth roughly $4.25 million at the October 12, 2026 close of $742.96, worked out. $1,000 a month is $12,000 a year, and at $2.10 a share each year that takes 5,714 shares. Earning $1,000 a year instead takes about 476 shares, or roughly $354,000 of Meta stock at the same price, before any tax.
How does Meta's dividend compare with Alphabet's?
The two started within months of each other and pay a similar yield. Alphabet paid its first dividend of $0.20 a share in June 2024 and now pays $0.22 a quarter, or $0.88 a year, a yield of 0.25% at the October 12, 2026 close (source: Stock Analysis Alphabet dividend). Meta's yield at the same close was 0.28%. How Alphabet and Meta stock compare sets the two companies side by side.
Can Meta stop paying its dividend?
Meta can, since each payment needs a fresh decision by its board. Meta's annual report says there can be no assurance that it will continue to declare cash dividends, and that future payments depend on capital, market conditions, laws and agreements (source: Meta Form 10-K for 2025). Every payment since 2024 has been paid as declared, and none has been cut.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include Meta's dividend announcements from 2024 to 2026, its fourth-quarter 2023, fourth-quarter 2025 and second-quarter 2026 results releases, its notice of the third-quarter 2026 results date, its Forms 10-K for 2022 and 2025, its Form 10-Q for the second quarter of 2026, and the SEC's T+1 settlement release. Market data comes from Yahoo Finance and Stock Analysis, and other sources include the xStocks documentation, Corporate Finance Institute and BloFin's stock futures notice, current as of October 13, 2026.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold Meta in any form. Meta's dividend is small next to its share price, so a single ordinary day's price move can wipe out a year of payments, and buying shares just before the ex-date to collect one carries the full price risk. Meta's board can change or stop the dividend at any time, a METAX balance grows only by the reinvested dividend after withholding tax, and the METAUSDT Perpetual pays no dividend at all while a leveraged position can be liquidated. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.