Stock Buybacks: What Ten Companies Spent, From Their SEC Filings
A stock buyback, or share repurchase, is a company using its cash to buy its own shares in the market or from holders, which reduces the number of shares outstanding. Each remaining share then owns a slightly larger slice of profit, which raises earnings per share without any change in earnings.
In the 12 months to September 2025, S&P 500 companies spent $1.020 trillion buying back their own stock and $664.9 billion on dividends, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Buybacks are also easy to misread, because the dollar figure in a press release says nothing about whether the share count actually fell. This page works from the cash-flow figures ten companies filed with the SEC, then runs the arithmetic on Apple, the largest buyer of its own stock in this group.
How it works
The company becomes the buyer. Under a repurchase program authorized by its board, a company buys its own shares, usually in the open market through a broker, sometimes through a tender offer or an accelerated arrangement with a bank. The repurchased shares are retired or held as treasury stock, and either way they stop counting as outstanding.
Fewer shares, same profit. Earnings per share is net income divided by the share count. Cut the count and the ratio rises, even if the business earned exactly the same amount. The same arithmetic lifts dividends per share if the total payout is held steady.
Cash leaves the company. The money spent is gone from the balance sheet, so shareholders’ equity falls by the amount paid. A company that borrows to fund repurchases raises its debt and lowers its equity at the same time.
It competes with dividends. A dividend pays every holder in cash, and holders in taxable accounts generally owe tax on it in the year it arrives. A buyback pays only the holders who sell, and the rest see their stake grow instead, which is why companies treat the two as alternatives.
The rules that apply
SEC Rule 10b-18 is a safe harbor, not a requirement. The rule text, 17 CFR 240.10b-18, says a company’s purchases will not be deemed manipulative solely because of their time, price or amount, or the number of brokers or dealers used, if four conditions are met. It also says no presumption of a violation arises when they are not met.
The four conditions. One broker or dealer per day. No purchase as the opening trade, and none in the last 10 minutes of the session for widely traded stocks, those with average daily trading value of $1 million or more and a public float of $150 million or more, or the last 30 minutes for others.
A price no higher than the highest independent bid or the last independent trade, whichever is higher.
And daily volume no more than 25% of the stock’s average daily trading volume, with one block purchase a week allowed in place of that limit.
A 1% excise tax. Section 4501 of the Internal Revenue Code, in the text in effect on 25 September 2026, imposes a tax equal to 1% of the fair market value of stock a publicly traded domestic corporation repurchases during the year, reduced by the value of stock it issues that year, including stock issued to employees.
S&P Dow Jones Indices estimated that it reduced S&P 500 operating earnings by 0.36% in the third quarter of 2025.
Across the S&P 500
The latest index-wide count. S&P Dow Jones Indices, in its release of 18 December 2025, the most recent one found when this page was checked on 25 September 2026, put third-quarter 2025 S&P 500 buybacks at $249.0 billion, up 6.2% from $234.6 billion in the second quarter. The 12 months to September 2025 set a record at $1.020 trillion.
Concentrated at the top. The 20 largest buyers accounted for 49.5% of the quarter’s total, and Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet and Meta Platforms alone for more than 22%, $55.2 billion. In the same release, 17.1% of S&P 500 companies had cut the share count used for earnings per share by at least 4% from a year earlier.
What that means for an index holder. A few very large companies do most of the buying, so the index-wide lift to earnings per share is driven by a handful of names rather than spread evenly.
A worked example
Apple’s own filings. In its fiscal year ended 27 September 2025, Apple reported net income of $112.01 billion and paid $90.71 billion to repurchase its common stock, 81.0% of its profit. Its weighted average diluted share count was 15,004,697,000.
Eight years of repurchases. From fiscal 2018 through fiscal 2025, Apple’s cash-flow statements show $650.58 billion spent on buybacks. Its diluted share count fell from 20,000,435,000 in fiscal 2018 to 15,004,697,000 in fiscal 2025, a drop of 4,995,738,000 shares, or 25.0%.
Both counts are on the basis used after Apple’s 2020 stock split.
What that did to earnings per share. Fiscal 2025 net income divided by the fiscal 2025 share count is $112,010 million / 15,004.697 million = $7.46 a share.
The same profit spread across the fiscal 2018 share count would be $112,010 million / 20,000.435 million = $5.60. The smaller share count alone accounts for earnings per share 33.3% higher than it would otherwise be.
Spending more than it earned. In four of those eight years, fiscal 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2024, Apple spent more on repurchases than its net income. In fiscal 2024 it was $94.95 billion against $93.74 billion.
The original data
The sample. Annual figures from the XBRL data each company attaches to its Form 10-K, downloaded from the SEC’s company facts service: cash paid for repurchases of common stock, net income, and the diluted weighted average share count, for fiscal years ending 2016 to 2026.
Where a figure appears in several filings, the most recent filing’s version is used. The full table is in the buyback file; its Apple share counts for fiscal 2016 and 2017 are as first reported, before the split adjustment.
The latest year for each. Apple, fiscal 2025: $90.71 billion. Alphabet, 2025: $45.71 billion.
Nvidia, fiscal 2026 ended 25 January 2026: $40.09 billion. JPMorgan Chase, 2025: $31.59 billion. Meta Platforms, 2025: $26.25 billion.
Microsoft, fiscal 2026 ended 30 June 2026: $22.27 billion. Exxon Mobil, 2025: $20.27 billion. Walmart, fiscal 2026 ended 31 January 2026: $8.09 billion. Johnson & Johnson, 2025: $5.95 billion. Coca-Cola, 2025: $0.75 billion. Together, $291.68 billion.
As a share of profit. The range is wide: Apple 81.0%, Exxon Mobil 70.3%, JPMorgan Chase 55.4% and Meta Platforms 43.4% at the high end; Microsoft 16.7% and Coca-Cola 5.7% at the low end. A company that pays out little in buybacks may pay more in dividends, or may be spending its cash on investment instead.
The share count, year by year. Apple’s diluted count fell in every fiscal year from 2018 to 2025: 20.00 billion, then 18.60, 17.53, 16.86, 16.33, 15.81, 15.41 and 15.00 billion.
The steepest single-year fall was the first, 7.02%, and the smallest were fiscal 2024 and 2025, at 2.56% and 2.62%. The chart below plots the same eight figures from the filings.
When it fails
Buying back stock issued to employees. Companies that pay staff in shares issue new stock every year. Repurchases that only absorb it leave the count flat, and the cash spent returns nothing to existing holders. The dollar figure alone cannot tell the two apart; the share count can.
Paying too much. A company buying its shares at a high valuation spends more cash per share retired. The arithmetic that lifts earnings per share works at any price, which is why the lift says nothing about whether the purchase was good value.
Borrowing to buy. Debt-funded repurchases raise leverage and interest costs. Several of these companies spent more than their net income in some years, which can only be sustained from cash reserves or borrowing.
Announced is not spent. A board authorization is a ceiling, not a commitment. The cash-flow figure used on this page counts what was actually paid, which is the number worth checking.
Earnings per share can mislead. When most of a rise in earnings per share comes from a shrinking denominator, the business itself may not be growing. Apple’s 33.3% lift on this page came entirely from the share count.
Related
The earnings per share page shows how to separate a buyback’s effect from real profit growth. The dividend page covers the other way companies return cash and how the two are taxed differently. And shareholders’ equity explains why large repurchases can shrink the equity line and flatter return on equity.
I check whether a company’s share count actually fell before I credit it with a buyback. A repurchase that only offsets stock issued to employees returns nothing to the holders, so compare the diluted share count year on year, not the headline dollar figure.
— Michael Whitman
This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.