Apple quietly conducted a record buyback of stock in the second quarter of 2019. It totaled $24 billion. AppleInsider analyzed the move.
It appears clear that Apple expects its share price to grow much higher in the future. So rather than carefully timing its repurchases to only occur when the stock price hits its lowest levels, Apple continues to buy shares back nearly as fast as it can all the time, even as the stock price jumps up and down as it continues to increment higher. Since 2012, Apple has now funded a total of $271.3 billion in stock buybacks. Most of these shares were repurchased at what would today be an incredible discount. While analysts have occasionally picked out a given trough in Apple’s stock price and declared that its buybacks were a huge mistake, it’s hard to imagine in hindsight how Apple could have better invested $271 billion of its past iPhone profits.
