The owner of Google will pay dividends for the first time. How much will Sergey Brin and Larry Page take

Alphabet Inc., the American holding company that owns Google, increased net profit and revenue in the first quarter of 2024 more strongly than market forecasts and announced the first dividends in the company’s history.

As stated in the company’s press release, revenue in January-March increased by 15% and amounted to $80.54 billion compared to $69.8 billion in the same period of the previous year.

Revenues excluding traffic acquisition costs rose to $67.6 billion from $58.1 billion a year earlier.

Alphabet’s net profit increased more than one and a half times and amounted to $23.66 billion compared to $15.05 billion a year earlier. Earnings per share rose to $1.89 from $1.17.

Experts polled by FactSet expected average revenue of $78.75 billion, adjusted revenue of $65.99 billion and net income of $1.51 per share.

The company’s management announced plans to pay a quarterly dividend of 20 cents per share and approved a share buyback program worth up to $70 billion. Dividends will be paid on June 17, the shareholder register closes on June 10.

The company’s co-founder Sergey Brin, who owns more than 730 million shares, will receive income from dividends in the amount of $146 million, Larry Page will earn $78 million from his 389 million shares, writes NBC.

Now, the only company with a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion that does not pay a dividend is Amazon, notes MarketWatch.

Google’s ad revenue last quarter rose 13% to $61.66 billion from $54.55 billion a year earlier and beat the market estimate of $60.3 billion. Specifically, the search service earned $46.16 billion from advertising — up 14% from a year earlier. YouTube ad revenue jumped 21% to $8.1 billion.

Google Cloud service revenue increased to $9.6 billion from $7.5 billion.

Mass layoffs at Google will cost Alphabet $700 million

In the fourth quarter, Google reported $86.3 billion in revenue, up 13% year over year

The company’s shares jumped 11.6% in after-hours trading on Thursday. Over the past 12 months, Alphabet’s market capitalization has grown 45% to $1.95 trillion.