Stock buybacks shattered records in 2018 (Axios):
Over the past few years the fire beneath Apple's red-hot stock price has largely been stock buybacks. The company has dwarfed other companies in terms of the number and amount of buybacks last year and for the past decade.
Driving the news: S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Monday that companies bought back $806.4 billion worth of their own shares, including $223 billion in just the fourth quarter in 2018. It was short of the $1 trillion Goldman Sachs predicted in August, but still an all-time record.
Of that record total, Apple bought back $10.1 billion worth of its own stock in Q4 and $74.2 billion for the year, more than a third of the entire S&P 500 total. The closest company to that total was Oracle, which spent $29.3 billion.
Between the lines: Companies have shown a very clear preference for buybacks over dividends so far this decade, with a major uptick in this trend in 2018 after the passage of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act.
- Over the past decade, Apple has bought back more than $260.4 billion of its own shares. The No. 2 company on the buybacks list is Microsoft, which has bought back less than half that amount, $118.5 billion.
Image: Data: S&P Dow Jones Indices; Chart: Naema Ahmed/Axios
[ed. See also: here, here and here.]
