When I first heard about a company announcing a $50 billion buyback last week, I was shocked. That amount of money exceeds the market cap of thousands of companies in the U.S. stock market. The company announcing this massive buyback was energy giant, Exxon Mobil (XOM), who expanded its share buyback program by up to $50 billion through 2024, representing around 8% of its market cap at announcement. In contrast, when Chevron (CVX) announced a buyback earlier this year, it was for just $5 billion.
The only three companies that come close to Exxon’s announcement are Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta Platforms (META) with their $90 billion, $60 billion and $50 billion buyback announcements respectively. Microsoft and Meta announced their buybacks at the peak of the tech bubble late last year. Apple is in a class of its own having announced two consecutive $90 billion buybacks in April 2021 and April 2022.