An astonishingly large number of companies announced stock buybacks over the last week with 42 companies announcing repurchases compared to 27 in the prior week. It is interesting to note that 11 out of these 42 companies have announced buybacks of $1 billion or more. A couple of huge buybacks that did not make our list of top 5 buybacks are, the $5 billion buyback by DuPont de Nemours (DD) and the $20 billion additional buyback by ConocoPhillips (COP) representing around 16% and 12% of their market caps at announcement respectively. DuPont dropped its acquisition of Rogers (ROG) last week and is now choosing to repurchase its own stock instead.
The buyback that stood out last week was announced by Lumen Technologies (LUMN). Lumen, formerly CenturyLink, is a telecommunications company that provides communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services.