This year has been defined by two trends: the artificial intelligence data-center build-out and major leadership transitions. Among the latter, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett retired as CEO on December 31st, and Apple’s CEO role changed hands on September 1st. Both companies have kept continuity at the board level.
Over the roughly 15 long years since Apple’s last long CEO tenure began, a strong case can be made that a nearly $879 billion capital-allocation decision overseen by Apple’s board — enough, at recent market values, to buy 488 of the 500 companies in the S&P 500 — is what permanently changed the company’s financial profile for remaining shareholders.
The board wagered on Apple in a way Wall Street rarely sees at this scale
Given the sums now flowing into AI infrastructure, it would be easy to assume the $879 billion went into data centers, chips, or research and development. That is not what happened.
Apple’s board-authorized capital-return program has been defined by share repurchases, <a href=”https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/09/14/tim-cook-purchase-488-sp-500-companies-with-879-billion-he-bought-something-changed-apple-fortune-forever/>Sean Williams write for The Motley Fool. After the board instituted a new capital-allocation policy and authorized buybacks beginning in fiscal 2013 (Apple’s fiscal year ends on the last Saturday of September), the company has deployed about $878.5 billion:
• 2013: $22.95 billion
• 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: $62.094 billion (through the fiscal third quarter)
In aggregate, those board-approved buybacks reduced Apple’s outstanding share count by about 44.5%.
That is the mechanical heart of the story. When a company retires shares, each remaining share represents a larger claim on future earnings and cash flow. Combined with rising net income and a services mix that has lifted margins, the smaller share count has amplified earnings per share and total shareholder returns far beyond what operating growth alone would have produced.
With the same pile of cash, Apple’s directors could have attempted a mega-acquisition of almost any S&P 500 name other than a handful of giants. They did not. They repeatedly authorized management to buy Apple stock instead — treating the company’s own shares as the preferred asset.
Buybacks are not free. Capital spent on repurchases is capital not spent on acquisitions, extra R&D, factories, or larger dividends. Critics argue that at rich valuations the board has sometimes paid a high price to shrink the float. Supporters counter that Apple’s enormous free cash flow made a multi-year return of capital inevitable, and that concentrating ownership in remaining holders has been one of the most powerful compounding tools in modern large-cap history.
The policy is also a board function, not a one-person decision. Share-repurchase authorizations are approved and refreshed by directors. Execution happens in the market over years. That is why the $879 billion figure belongs, first, to Apple’s board of directors: they set the priority, kept expanding it, and let it run long enough to retire nearly half the equity base.
MacDailyNews Take: As the new John Ternus era begins, investors will watch whether the board, with former CEO Tim Cook as its Executive Chair, keeps the same bias (returning surplus cash through buybacks) or tilts more toward product and infrastructure spending. The last decade-plus already shows what that choice can do: not the purchase of 488 other companies, but a larger ownership stake in Apple itself.
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if they continue their buybacks, in another decade or two there will only be a handful of shares of apple stock left, and each one will be worth 2 Trillion dollars.
I get a dividend, it’s taxed, I invest it in the stock market and the gains are taxed again.
Instead with share buybacks Apple Pay’s the tax when retiring the shares, not me.
I hope they double the program.