4 Big Tech giants have plowed over $1 trillion into stock buybacks in 10 years — more than Tesla or Meta’s entire market value::Apple poured over $600 billion into buybacks in the decade to March 31, exceeding Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta’s combined spending.
Going public is a way to raise money. It seems like a stock buyback would simply be a way to pay it back, at a fair market value, and eventually take back control of the company. Long-term that sounds like a good move, as then the company is no longer saddled with their primary responsibility as making money for their stockholders. Instead it can focus on the doing stuff that actually matters and is valuable for the long-term health of the company, it’s employees, and the planet… ideally.
Hah! If only that were true.
It is true. If they are no longer a public company, they no longer have stockholders, and the fiduciary responsibility is gone.
What I’m trying to say is, these companies don’t use stock buybacks with the intention of going private. They’re doing stock buybacks to keep the stock price high, so they continue to please stockholders.
Stockholder pleasing is unfortunately not going away anytime soon.