S&P 500 companies are returning more cash than ever to shareholders.

Some of the biggest names in business returned $1.6 trillion to investors in 2024 — three-fifths of which came in the form of stock buybacks, and the remaining in dividends.¹ In Q4 buybacks were up 7.4% from Q3 and, by the year’s end, buybacks set an annual record of $942.5 billion, according to new data from S&P Dow Jones Indices.² 

Stocking up on shares

Apple alone spent more than $104.2 billion on buybacks in 2024, following an announcement in May that it would repurchase $110 billion in shares — a move that would top its own record for the largest buyback in U.S. history.^3,4 Shares rose as much as 7.9% in after-hours trading on the eve of the announcement.⁵

Some of the nation’s best-known companies are making similar moves, with Meta, Alphabet, NVIDIA, Exxon Mobil, and Microsoft all repurchasing billions of dollars of shares in 2024.⁶

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What are stock buybacks?

A stock buyback is when a publicly traded company repurchases shares of its own stock from shareholders. It’s one way that companies can distribute earnings to shareholders, offering a more tax-advantaged alternative to traditional dividends. Stock buybacks are available to all shareholders, though investors aren’t required to sell their stock back to the company. Companies typically buy back shares of their stock if they believe they are undervalued, with the intent to provide investors with a better return.

Biggest S&P 500 buybacks for Q4 2024

Information technology led the way for stock buybacks in 2024, accounting for almost 27% of total buybacks. Financial (18.5%) and communication services (15.1%) also made up a large share.⁷

In Q4, the companies with the largest buybacks were:⁸

Are stock buybacks good for investors?

Stock buybacks are generally considered good for investors as they can increase share prices without immediate tax consequences. When a company initiates a buyback, they reduce the number of shares on the open market, which can increase the value for continuing shareholders.  Essentially, when the same earnings pie is cut into fewer slices, each slice gains a greater share of the attributed earnings. However, critics believe that buybacks could be viewed as share-price manipulation and say corporate profits could be put to more productive use.

Unlike dividend payments, which count towards an investor’s annual income and are taxed in the year the income is realized, the shareholder doesn’t pay taxes until selling the shares. In the immediate term, they can reap the reward of the higher share value; in the long run, increased earnings per share (EPS) can have a powerful effect on the share price.

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Buybacks for 2025

Several companies have already announced new buyback plans or additions to existing repurchase programs this year. Among them are:

• Booking Holdings (parent company of Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak, and OpenTable) which approved a new $20 billion stock buyback program in January.⁹
• Chipotle which boosted total repurchase authorization to $1 billion from $700 million during the final quarter of 2024.¹⁰
• TJX (parent company of T. J. Maxx, HomeGoods, and more) which plans on executing between $2 billion and $2.5 billion of buybacks in 2025.¹¹
• General Motors which announced a new $6 billion stock buyback repurchase program in February.¹²
• Shell which has a $3.5 billion share buyback plan in place in 2025.¹³