Oprah Winfrey Weight Watchers Tweet About Bread Earned Her $12 Million

Months after buying a stake in Weight Watchers and announcing she'd become the company's new face, Oprah Winfrey made good on her promise to bring in money for the company. Winfrey recently shared on Twitter that she's lost 26 pounds while still eating bread. The message made stock prices soar around 20 percent and earn the media mogul $12 million—for a single tweet!

According to Market Watch, the Queen of All Media went on Twitter in the early hours of Tuesday morning to say she'd lost 26 pounds with the diet, even though she'd been eating bread every day. Of course, the Oprah effect happened and the company's stock immediately went up 19.5 percent, and when trading closed for the day, the stock had gone up.

Eat bread. Lose weight. Whaaatttt? #ComeJoinMe https://t.co/jUgpk9ToXY https://t.co/xtnB53EwSf

— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) January 26, 2016

Now, the interesting part is that Winfrey bought 10 percent stake at Weight Watchers late last year, making her the biggest individual stakeholder in the company. So, of course, the stock boost gave her a big pump and, in all, she made $12 million in a little more than an hour.

This isn't the first time Winfrey's credibility gives a boost to her recently acquired diet company. Ever since she took over, with a deal that included her personally becoming the program's new main endorser, the company's shares have gone up nearly 100 percent – and she only bought her own stock in December. As The Guardian puts it, Winfrey "singlehandedly added nearly $150M to Weight Watchers' market capitalization."

CNN Money reports that, at the time Winfrey announced she was buying the majority stake in the company, Weight Watchers shares were below $7; right after her involvement was announced, they more than doubled to more than $15, then going up to about $28 by November.

The recent tweet isn't Winfrey's first ad with the program, as her first one from weeks back has already been watched by 150,000 people on YouTube.