Companies in the S&P 500 are on track to give investors more than $1 trillion in stock buybacks and dividend increases this year, according to Howard Silverblatt, a senior analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices. The boom in buybacks and dividends has been driven in part by the tax cuts passed late last year.
The first four months of the year saw 169 companies in the S&P 500 index increase their dividends while no companies cut their shareholder payouts, “an event not seen since at least 2003,” Silverblatt says. And companies are accelerating their stock buyback programs: “For the current Q2 2018 period, buybacks are expected to increase (again), potentially setting a new record for the year, with total shareholder return (of buybacks and dividends for the S&P 500) topping USD 1 trillion for the first time.”
