Meta Platforms Inc. surprised Wall Street on Thursday with its first-ever dividend, a move that’s likely Silicon Valley’s most monumental dividend decision since Apple Inc. reinstated its payout over a decade ago — and one that could light a fire under other tech giants. With Meta’s META, +1.19% plans to pay a 50 cents-a-share quarterly dividend beginning in March, the company will join Apple AAPL, +1.33% and Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +1.56% among Big Tech’s dividend payers. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s wi ...

Walt Disney Co. DIS, +1.05% on Thursday said its board of directors is urging shareholders to “protect their investment and the future of the Company by voting the WHITE proxy card for only Disney’s 12 nominees and not the Trian Group or Blackwells nominees.” The latter groups are activist investors who are trying to place representatives on Disney’s board. Disney announced its shareholders meeting will be held April 3. ...

Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk’s push to reincorporate the electric-vehicle maker in Texas after a legal defeat in Delaware may have broader implications for the company.The move could reinforce the image of Musk as a mercurial chief executive acting on yet another whim while shying away from improving Tesla’s TSLA, +0.19% corporate governance. Musk tweeted on his social-media platform X, the former Twitter, late Wednesday that Tesla “will move immediately to hold a shareholder vote” on whether to tra ...

For all the attention on Apple Inc.’s iPhone sales, a less glamorous item could be the big driver of the stock after earnings.JPMorgan’s Samik Chatterjee wrote that Apple’s AAPL, +0.87% margins could be the big swing factor for Apple’s stock in the wake of its Thursday afternoon report. Don’t miss: This fund is shorting Apple — and just bet against another popular AI stock“Premiumization of the iPhone with price-mix tailwinds along with tight cost management are helping hardware margins, and the mix change ...

Altria Group Inc.’s stock MO, -0.84% rose 1.3% in premarket trading after the tobacco company set a new $1 billion share buyback program and matched analyst estimates for adjusted earnings. Altria said its fourth-quarter profit fell by 23% to $2.06 billion, or $1.16 a share, from $2.69 billion, or $1.50 a share, in the year-ago quarter. Altria’s adjusted fourth-quarter profit of $1.18 a share matched the FactSet consensus estimate. Revenue dipped by 1.2% to $5.02 billion, slightly shy of the analyst estima ...

Merck & Co. Inc. on Thursday reported fourth-quarter earnings and sales that beat analysts’ expectations, powered by strong growth in cancer and vaccine products.  The drugmaker reported a net loss of $1.226 billion, or 48 cents a share, after income of $3.017 billion, or $1.18 a share, in the year-earlier period. Adjusted earnings came to 3 cents a share, down from $1.62 a year earlier but beating the FactSet consensus of a loss of 11 cents a share. Revenue totaled $14.63 billion in the quarter, up 6% from ...

U.S. stock futures rose early Thursday ahead of earnings from three of the Magnificent 7: Apple, Amazon.com and Meta Platforms.On Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 317 points, or 0.82%, to 38150, the S&P 500 declined 79 points, or 1.61%, to 4846, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 346 points, or 2.23%, to 15164.What’s driving markets The S&P 500 has dropped 1.7% over the last two sessions as investors expressed disappointment over big tech earnings and monetary policy trajectory. Both factors a ...

A new lawsuit accuses Tesla Inc. of repeatedly mishandling hazardous waste at its facilities in California. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in San Joaquin County (Calif.) Superior Court, the district attorneys of 25 California counties — including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Alameda, which is home to Tesla’s Fremont manufacturing factory — accused the electric-vehicle maker of improperly handling, transporting and disposing hazardous materials including oil, lead acid batteries, antifreeze and diesel fuel ...

The earnings whirlwind for technology and silicon companies now has enveloped Advanced Micro Devices Inc.  AMD, -2.54% after it reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2023 results. I know that many other stories and analysts will dive into the dollars more deeply than me, but it’s worth recounting a couple of the key points that I think are relevant to how we look at the ability for AMD to sustain its momentum into 2024.From a fourth-quarter 2023 perspective, looking at year-on-year comparisons to a 2022 tha ...

Amazon.com Inc.’s big year of earnings improvement is expected to have culminated with some eye-popping growth during the holiday quarter. The e-commerce giant is forecast to post 80 cents a share in earnings for the December quarter, which would be up more than 2,500% from the 3 cents a share Amazon AMZN, -2.39% notched in the same period a year before. Quarterly operating income is projected to rise 280% to $10.4 billion.Meanwhile, full-year EPS growth is expected to log a big positive swing to $2.70, whe ...