January 2019 Data Update 8: Dividends and Buybacks - Fact and Fiction
aswathdamodaran.substack.com
In my series of data posts, I had always planned to get to dividends and buybacks, the two mechanisms that companies have for returning cash to stockholders, at this point, but an op ed on buybacks by Senators Schumer and Sanders this week, in the New York Times, will undoubtedly make this post seem reactive. The senators argue that the hundreds of billions of dollars that US companies have expended buying back their own shares could have been put to better use, if it had been reinvested back in their businesses or used to increase wages for their employees, and offer a preview of legislation that they plan to introduce to counter the menace. Like the senators, I am concerned about the declining manufacturing base and income inequality in the US, but I believe that their legislative proposal is built on premises that are at war with the data, and has the potential for making things worse, not better.
January 2019 Data Update 8: Dividends and Buybacks - Fact and Fiction
January 2019 Data Update 8: Dividends and…
January 2019 Data Update 8: Dividends and Buybacks - Fact and Fiction
In my series of data posts, I had always planned to get to dividends and buybacks, the two mechanisms that companies have for returning cash to stockholders, at this point, but an op ed on buybacks by Senators Schumer and Sanders this week, in the New York Times, will undoubtedly make this post seem reactive. The senators argue that the hundreds of billions of dollars that US companies have expended buying back their own shares could have been put to better use, if it had been reinvested back in their businesses or used to increase wages for their employees, and offer a preview of legislation that they plan to introduce to counter the menace. Like the senators, I am concerned about the declining manufacturing base and income inequality in the US, but I believe that their legislative proposal is built on premises that are at war with the data, and has the potential for making things worse, not better.