- Q1 2019 share repurchases were $205.8 billion – 7.7% lower than the record Q4 2018 but 8.9% higher year-over-year.
- Apple sets another index record, spending $23.8 billion in buybacks for the quarter; company accounts for eight of the top ten record quarters.
- Buybacks for the 12-month period ending in March 2019 were a record $823.2 billion, up 43.1% year-over-year.
- One in four companies used buybacks to reduce their share count by at least four percent.
NEW YORK, June 24, 2019: S&P Dow Jones Indices (“S&P DJI”) announced today that preliminary Q1 2019 S&P 500® stock buybacks, or share repurchases, were $205.8 billion. This ends the streak of four consecutive quarters of record buybacks as Q1 2019 declined 7.7% from the Q4 2018 record of $223.0 billion. The quarter was up 8.9% from the Q1 2018 $189.1 billion, which set a record at the time.
Historical data on S&P 500 buybacks are available at www.spdji.com/indices/equity/sp-500.
Key Takeaways:
- The average share price during the quarter increased 0.8% after Q4 2018’s average price decline of 5.3%. Combined with the 7.7% lower buyback expenditures, this resulted in approximately 20% fewer shares repurchased.
- On aggregate, 0.94% of the outstanding shares were repurchased in Q1 2019,down from 1.18% in Q4 2018.
- The cumulative four quarters of repurchases increased the percentage of issues with substantially reduced share counts of at least 4% year-over-year to 24.9%, up from the prior quarter’s 18.7% and Q1 2018’s 13.6%, giving 1-in-4 issues a strong EPS tailwind.
- S&P 500 Q1 2019 dividends totaled $117.3 billion, down 2.1% from the record setting Q4 2018 of $119.8 billion.
- Total shareholder return of buybacks and dividends for the quarter came in at $323.1 billion, down 5.7% from the record Q4 2018 period expenditure of $342.8 billion, and up 8.4% from the $298.2 billion reported for Q1 2018.
- Total shareholder return for the 12-month period ending March 2019 set a record at $1.288 trillion, up 2.0% from the prior 12-month record in Q4 2018 of $1.263 trillion, and up 28.3% from the $1.003 trillion from the comparable Q1 2018 12-month period.
“Despite the quarterly decline, companies continued to buy back shares in earnest, posting the second highest expenditure on record,” said Howard Silverblatt, Senior Index Analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “With Q2 2019 currently projected to be another strong buyback quarter, investors will need to start separating EPS growth in two categories – actual growth vs. growth from share count reductions. You don’t want to pay the same multiple for buybacks as you do for growth.”
Silverblatt also found that buybacks continue to be top heavy, with the top 20 issues accounting for 51.2% of the buybacks. For the 12-months ending March 2019, the top 20 issues represented 41.4% of all buybacks, compared to 36.1% for the 2018 period. On an issue level, 389 issues reported buybacks for Q1 2019, down from 404 in Q4 2018 and 397 in Q1 2018. For the 12 months ending March 2019, 442 issues reported buybacks compared to 431 for the comparable 2018 period.
