While Wall Street obsesses over splashy acquisitions and AI mega-spends, Apple took a quieter, yet far more impactful, path. Instead of using the company’s massive cash reserves to snap up other businesses, Apple invested a staggering $853 billion in share buybacks since 2013. That war chest could have purchased nearly any of the other 487 companies in the S&P 500. Instead, Apple retired more than 44% of its own shares, supercharged earnings per share, and delivered extraordinary returns to long-term shareholders.
Sean Williams for The Motley Fool:
Beginning in 2013, Apple began repurchasing a lot of its own stock — and it hasn’t stopped:
2013: $22.95 billion in buybacks
2014: $45 billion
2015: $35.253 billion
2016: $29.722 billion
2017: $32.9 billion
2018: $72.738 billion
2019: $66.897 billion
2020: $72.358 billion
2021: $85.971 billion
2022: $89.402 billion
2023: $77.55 billion
2024: $94.949 billion
2025: $90.711 billion
2026: $36.989 billion (through the fiscal second quarter)One reason Apple has been aggressive with share buybacks is that it helps the company’s optics…
Another reason Tim Cook and the Apple board went all-in on buybacks is that President Donald Trump’s tax policies made it logical to do so. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed into law by Trump in December 2017, permanently lowered the peak marginal corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21% (the lowest level since 1939). Being able to retain more of its earnings gave Apple a clear path to repurchase its stock without pulling capital away from research and development. This is why buybacks catapulted higher in 2018 (and beyond).
Lastly, share repurchases often incentivize long-term investing, which can minimize volatility.
MacDailyNews Take: Fewer AAPL shares mean bigger slices for longterm Apple shareholders, although it might’ve been nice to have acquired Tesla for $18.51B, or even $52.32B – $57.44B when Musk reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (Cook refused to take the meeting or even engage on the topic).
Tesla Year-End Market Values:
2013: $18.51 billion
2014: $27.95 billion
2015: $31.54 billion
2016: $34.42 billion
2017: $52.32 billion
2018: $57.44 billion
2019: $75.71 billion
2020: $668.90 billion
2021: $1.061 trillion
2022: $388.97 billion
2023: $789.89 billion
2024: $1.296 trillion
2025: $1.496 trillion
An investment of $18.51B that results in $1.496 trillion a mere dozen years later is a 7,982.12% increase. From 2013 to 2025, Apple’s market value increased 702.88% (not shabby, but still).
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In financial economic terms, the repeated annual buybacks of shares is a serious indictment against Cook and the entire management of Apple. What it says is that Apple could not find investments (aka purchases of other company’s assets) that promised returns in excess of Apple’s cost of capital. It just preposterous to believe that attractive investment opportunities over all those years were impossible to identify and purchase. Shame of Cook and the entire management team and Board of Directors. All the stockholders and customers of Apple have suffered because of their collective blindness and lack of imagination.
AAPL stock over 10 years (to July 6, 2026) +1,194%
S&P 500 (via ticker SPY) …. + 253%
Pick other time intervals as you wish. Now you are saying AAPL
should have “cherry picked” the S&P 500 for some supposedly
amazing multi-billion $ acquisition. Apple has done more than
fine under Cook. “Beleaguered” b/c of some dumb financial
engineering that didn’t happen? Get real.
Increasing stock prices does nothing at all to improve a company. It’s amazing that people can believe that. It DOES help people like Cook who are paid partly with stock options.
Apple’s current P/E is well north of 30, meaning that in a sane world where nobody would wait for over 30 years to start making returns on an investment, AAPL would correctly be seen as overpriced.
A proper and more direct way to reward shareholders is with dividends. No trickery required.
Apple acquired 65-75 companies over the last 10 years. No, they didn’t buy HP or General Motors, but they bought the smaller companies that made sense and helped them excel at what they do best. I, for one, am very pleased with the returns I’ve seen over the years.
In other words, don’t take investment advice from Tim Cook.
“when Musk reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (Cook refused to take the meeting or even engage on the topic)”
Cook refused because he knew Musk would ultimately take over Apple and that’s not what Cook wanted to allow to be possible. Musk could have offered Tesla with him for $1 billion and $500 billion without him and only the without Musk would Cook have likely considered as his project Titan was starting to become the disaster it became.
It’s NOT just a matter of not using capitol for worthy investments, it’s the approved Wall St game of manipulation. They were once illegal and the “benefit” that once made them illegal is still extant.
Wall St heroes need the quarterly “proof” that everything is ok…just look at our “growing” EPS.
Tied to this was AAPL’s concerted borrowing, as they knew that it was cheaper to borrow because it’s better to pay-back a loan with inflated $$…esp when interest rates were stupid-low. Under Biden it was a no-brainer and Trump is encouraging the same…(he’s just miffed The past Fed Chair didn’t and maybe Warsh won’t).
Our “economy” is the strongest Ponzi in the World.
IMHO all this misses the point. The focus is largely on how Apple could have made more money. I’m interested in them making better products. Under Cook’s tenure there’s been no major innovation. Most if not all new products had Job’s fingerprints on it. Siri still doesn’t work correctly. Apple’s newest effort to fix Siri is have Google do it for them. And overall their products don’t work as well as they once did. The ecosystem that once was a huge draw for new customers is a dysfunctional. Software has fallen way behind current standards and doesn’t maximize the improvement in the chips.
I’m a stockholder and I appreciate the profits I have shared in with the rise in value. But I’d gladly give some of that back to have the quality I once experienced I in products and customer service.