You could keep the passive income or reinvest to increase your position in this high-growth company.
Investors usually don’t flock to technology stocks for dividend income as these companies often dedicate their resources to growth rather than rewarding shareholders. But some of today’s tech winners, though not the biggest dividend stocks out there, still offer this payment to their shareholders — so when you buy them, you get exposure to high growth and passive income. And that’s a great combination that could help your portfolio during good and bad times.
Meta Platforms (META -2.95%) is one of these players, announcing its first ever dividend earlier this year. How much do you have to invest in the social media giant if you want $1,000 in annual dividend income? Let’s find out.
Image source: Getty Images.
Meta’s annual dividend
Meta, through quarterly payments, offers investors an annual dividend of $2 per share. This means, at the current stock price of $519, you would invest $259,500 to buy 500 shares — and annually this investment would bring you $1,000 in dividend income. This may seem like a hefty investment, and it is, but don’t worry — even if you invest a lot less in Meta, you still can benefit from adding this company to your portfolio.
From a passive income perspective, if you also invest in other dividend paying stocks, even a small payment from Meta will boost the overall income you collect each year. An idea is to favor stocks offering a higher dividend yield — Meta’s is only about 0.2% compared with the S&P 500’s average yield of 1.4% — as the core of your dividend portfolio and add Meta for its growth/passive income potential.
You also may consider reinvesting your Meta dividends to increase your position in the stock — by doing this, you could win if the shares climb over time.
And there’s reason to be optimistic about Meta’s chances of gaining over the long run. This social media powerhouse has a solid moat in this main business, which should keep revenue climbing, and the company is heavily investing in the high-growth area of artificial intelligence (AI) — with the goal of becoming a leader there, too. This could add to dividend payment potential over time.
All of this means that even if you don’t collect $1,000 in dividend income from Meta, this tech stock still makes a compelling buy today for investors seeking growth and a bit of passive income.
Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Adria Cimino has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.