Apple continues to dominate stock buybacks by a wide margin

Apple continues to dominate stock buybacks with a massive $20.449 billion in share repurchases in the third quarter alone.

Brian Sozzi for Yahoo Finance:

About 53.8% of third quarter stock buyback activity was fueled by the top 20 companies, according to new data from S&P Dow Jones Indices senior index analyst Howard Silverblatt. The top 20 list was headlined by a who’s who of the rich and powerful in corporate America: Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Oracle and Microsoft.
“Apple continued to be the poster child for buybacks as it again spent the most of any issue, with the Q3 2021 expenditure ranked eighth highest in S&P history,” said Silverblatt.
The aggressive buying of stock by companies — which has the effect of lowering share counts and juicing earnings per share —in the third quarter was noteworthy beyond the 20 largest companies listed by Silverblatt.
Third quarter buybacks among S&P 500 companies tallied $234.6 billion, up 18% from the second quarter and 130.5% from one year ago. For the 12-months ended September 2021, buybacks totaled $742.2 billion — up 21.8% year-over-year.

MacDailyNews Take: In distant second place was Alphabet Inc. with $15.033 billion spent on buybacks. In 12 months thru September 2021, Apple spent a whopping $92.527 billion on buybacks compared to distant No.2 Meta (Facebook) with $44.705 billion.
For perspective, the market value of Mercedes-maker Daimler is $74.554 billion.
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