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More here:Yardeni says the companies in the S&P 500 have spent roughly $4.5 trillion on buybacks over the past 10 years, yet by his calculation, which include some adjustments, the shares outstanding of those companies has dropped by just 2 percent during that time. What accounts for the difference? Employee stock compensation.
Buybacks haven’t returned cash to shareholders, or boosted share prices, Yardeni says. All they have done is bought back the shares that have been issued to employees, essentially enabling higher executive compensation by picking up the tab of stock options. Based on data from S&P Dow Jones Indices, the current members of the S&P 500 had 284 billion shares outstanding in early 2009, and have bought back bought 81.5 billion shares through the end of 2018. That means shares outstanding should have dropped by nearly 29 percent, instead of falling 2 percent, by Yardeni’s calculations – or rising
slightly, as data from S&P show.
Repurchases are just a way of squaring that accounting. Without buybacks, shareholders would effectively be paying for stock compensation twice – once when they are expensed and a second time from the dilution of additional shares. Executives get the options either way. And indeed, the growth of buybacks in the past decade-and-a-half correlates pretty closely with the 2005 accounting change for options. There is even some research to suggest causation.
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