Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) stunned investors on Thursday with a blowout fourth-quarter earnings report. The social media giant breezed past estimates on the top and bottom lines and offered better-than-expected guidance for the first quarter, forecasting another round of 25% year-over-year revenue growth. By the end of trading on Friday, the stock had jumped 20.3%, adding more than $200 billion in market cap. That's the biggest single-day market cap gain for an individual U.S. stock in history.

One reason for those gains is that Meta announced its first-ever dividend. Management said it would pay a $0.50 per share quarterly dividend on March 26 to shareholders of record on Feb. 22. That gives the stock a dividend yield of 0.4% at the current share price.

The dividend was a surprise since there had been little expectation that Meta would initiate a regular payout especially as the company was facing challenges just a few quarters ago with revenue and profits declining.

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Source Fool.com