“Thanks in part to President Donald Trump’s tax reform which cut the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, companies listed in the S&P 500 Index boosted stock buybacks, setting a new record for the group,” Donna Fuscaldo reports for Investopedia.
Apple Inc. “has a massive amount of cash, standing at $267.2 billion as of the end of the March quarter,” Fuscaldo reports. “Before President Trump signed tax reform into law much of that cash was held overseas and would have been repatriated at a high tax rate. But tax reform gives companies a break and thus the record stock buyback program.”
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“First-quarter stock buybacks among S&P 500 companies set a record, boosted by strong activity in information technology, healthcare and financials,” Lawrence C. Strauss reports or Barron’s. “In all, S&P 500 companies repurchased $189.1 billion of shares in the first quarter, surpassing the previous record, set in the third quarter of 2007, by nearly 10%, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.”
“The 20 companies in the index that bought back the most stock accounted for nearly half of all the repurchases,” Strauss reports. “Led by Apple, the tech sector accounted for about one-third of all buybacks, or $63.4 billion. The health-care sector came in second at $35.6 billion, followed closely by financials at $33.8 billion.”
“Apple alone repurchased $22.8 billion of its shares, besting its previous record of $18 billion set four years earlier,” Strauss reports. “It was the greatest quarterly volume ever for any company in the index.”
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