Buyback
Scorecard
The Most and Least Effective Stock Buyback Programs
The S&P 500 as Stock Repurchasers
Industry Comparisons
The table below shows the 10 most and least effective stock buyback programs among the companies in the S&P 500 that bought back at least 4 percent or $1 billion of their shares from June 30, 2011 through June 30, 2013, according to their return on investment. As calculated by Fortuna Advisors, a New York City-based consultancy that compiled the data for Institutional Investor, buyback ROI measures the overall rate of return of these companies’ buybacks, based on the internal rate of return of the cash flows associated with them. Buyback strategy tracks the performance of the underlying stock in terms of annualized total shareholder return. Once Fortuna determines buyback ROI and buyback strategy, buyback effectiveness can then be calculated as simply the difference between the two, determined as compounded return.
The Best and Worst Corporate Stock Buyback Programs
Best Company Industry Market
Capitalization $ Total
Buyback $ Total
Buyback /
Market Cap Buyback
Strategy Buyback
Effectiveness Buyback ROI 1 Constellation Brands Food, Beverage and Tobacco $9,809 $797 8.1% 52.3% 30.9% 99.4% 2 Gilead Sciences Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology and Life Sciences $78,205 $1,860 2.4% 60.0% 13.3% 81.3% 3 Tesoro Corp. Energy $7,210 $360 5.0% 52.9% 16.7% 78.5% 4 Western Digital Corp. Technology Hardware and Equipment $14,677 $1,446 9.9% 26.5% 37.9% 74.5% 5 Tenet Healthcare Corp. Healthcare Equipment and Services $4,771 $620 13.0% 31.1% 31.9% 72.9% 6 H&R Block Consumer Services $7,567 $525 6.9% 37.2% 24.3% 70.5% 7 Seagate Technology Technology Hardware and Equipment $16,074 $4,080 25.4% 63.8% 1.1% 65.6% 8 Celgene Corp. Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology and Life Sciences $48,795 $5,454 11.2% 43.2% 13.7% 62.8% 9 GameStop Corp. Retailing $4,944 $523 10.6% 19.5% 36.3% 62.8% 10 Biogen Idec Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology and Life Sciences $51,083 $1,137 2.2% 51.6% 6.0% 60.7% Worst Company Industry Market
Capitalization $ Total
Buyback $ Total
Buyback /
Market Cap Buyback
Strategy Buyback
Effectiveness Buyback ROI 1 Cliffs Natural Resources Materials $2,488 $290 11.7% -52.4% -3.9% -54.3% 2 Apple Technology Hardware and Equipment $372,202 $17,950 4.8% 14.0% -50.1% -43.1% 3 F5 Networks Technology Hardware and Equipment $5,421 $485 8.9% -13.6% -6.6% -19.3% 4 Teradata Corp. Software and Services $8,208 $550 6.7% -0.2% -19.0% -19.2% 5 Edwards Lifesciences Corp. Healthcare Equipment and Services $7,591 $744 9.8% -9.0% -6.9% -15.2% 6 Devon Energy Corp. Energy $21,062 $1,042 4.9% -17.4% 9.4% -9.7% 7 Juniper Networks Technology Hardware and Equipment $9,776 $1,083 11.1% -29.5% -28.7% -9.2% 8 CH Robinson Worldwide Transportation $9,041 $577 6.4% -12.2% 5.0% -7.8% 9 Dell Technology Hardware and Equipment $23,400 $1,861 8.0% -6.1% -1.2% -7.2% 10 Altera Corp. Semiconductors and Semiconductor Equipment $10,561 $543 5.1% -14.2% 8.8% -6.7% Source: Fortuna Advisors Analysis using data from the Capital IQ database. Financial Data from June 2011 to June 2013. Includes the 487 members of the current S&P 500 that were public for the full period. Market Capitalization as of: 06/30/2013. Companies Included here if $ Total Buyback / Market Capitalization is greater than 4% or if $ Total Buyback is greater than $1 Billion.