This text initially appeared on Enterprise Insider.
Microsoft is on monitor to pay former CEO Steve Ballmer round $1 billion in annual dividends.
Ballmer, who’s at the moment the sixth richest individual on this planet, is the only largest shareholder of Microsoft. As of his final possession disclosure in 2014, Ballmer owned 333.2 million Microsoft shares, representing about 4% of the corporate.
At present, his stake is price $128 billion, in accordance with Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, after amassing a $42 billion fortune this yr because of a 55% rise in Microsoft’s inventory worth.
Ballmer constructed up his stake throughout his 34-year profession at Microsoft, becoming a member of the corporate in 1980 as worker quantity 30. He turned Microsoft’s CEO in 2000, close to the height of the dot-com bubble, and stepped down in 2014 when the present CEO director Satya Nadella took the lead function.
Microsoft paid a $2.79 dividend per share in 2023, which equates to an annual dividend cost of about $930 million to Ballmer primarily based on his stake within the firm.
That payout will improve in 2024, as Microsoft not too long ago raised its dividend by 10% to pay $3 per share yearly. That might equate to an annual dividend cost of $999.6 million to Ballmer in 2024, and could possibly be increased assuming Microsoft continues its pattern of accelerating its dividend payout annually.
Microsoft has elevated its dividend payout for 18 consecutive years, so Ballmer’s annual dividend payout is prone to exceed $1 billion in 2024 and proceed to develop within the coming years.
Ballmer’s large stake in Microsoft has made him the fourth richest individual on this planet, only a few billion {dollars} behind Larry Ellison and his former boss Invoice Gates.
Gates has considerably diversified his wealth away from Microsoft and towards money and different public shares since leaving the corporate. The truth is, in 2014 Gates additionally owned about 4% of Microsoft, holding 330 million shares within the firm. However a number of gross sales through the years have left Gates proudly owning simply over 1% of the software program big.