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Apple’s recent buybacks brought highest 4-month returns of any company since 1998

Data from Bloomberg today shows just how profitable Apple’s recent buybacks have been with the company experiencing the highest returns of any company in over a decade. The buybacks, which were also the biggest ever since Bloomberg and S&P started tracking these numbers, came as Apple stock increased 77 percent over the last 15 months and 25 percent since its $18 billion buyback last year:

Those are the highest four-month returns among the 20 biggest quarterly repurchases by any company since 1998, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Standard & Poor’s. S&P 500 constituents have spent $211 billion on their own stock this year amid concern the five-year bull market is prone to selloffs such as last week’s 2.7 percent retreat.

The report notes that other companies have been less successful with Microsoft experiencing a 16 percent increase in 2014 following its $3 billion buyback, while others including EBay and Boeing experienced shares falling. The average for the 100 largest buybacks being tracked by Bloomberg is a 5.5 percent increase this year.

Bloomberg adds that “the ratio of Apple’s per-share profit growth to its overall earnings has increased due to buybacks.” That includes an increase of 19.6 percent year-over-year as of last quarter compared to an increase in net income of 12.3 percent.

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Comments

  1. Laughing_Boy48 - 10 years ago

    There are many unhappy people who believe Apple threw away their money on buybacks when they could have made many more acquisitions. I wasn’t too happy about the buybacks when they first started because they didn’t seem to be boosting Apple’s share price for quite some time, but everything worked out quite well, so I have no reason to complain.

    • rahhbriley - 10 years ago

      (This really isn’t meant to be inflammatory, just mentioning it bc tone doesn’t come through well in text)
      What were you unhappy or uneasy about? The stock was SOOOOOO undervalued, and I know of no other way to get those kind returns in that little of time on that amount of money. Not to mention that Apple had/has loads of cash sitting around to buy companies with, even after the billions spent on buybacks. The buy backs in no way limited or slowed their acquisitions, in fact, I believe this year and the end of last has been the most active for Apple in regards to M&As.

      Additionally, at the time, Apple stocks had been so significantly undervalued, there was no reasonable way it could have continued to drop much farther. To me it was a near sure thing it would go up, and a lot, but even if it had gone up only a little, they would have made decent money (small percentages of Billions is still good money). They made billions on this money, that would have “sat in the bank” gaining no value. Apple has their own hedge fund to manage their money that is just “sitting there.” If they don’t spend it or invest it, it loses value (inflation, blah blah blah). The move should have instilled confidence in investors, in my opinion.

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.