Google bought back 1.9 billion shares (at $156 billion) but only shrank share count by 1.2% due to stock-based compensation

The villains in this story are Meta and Google, two companies whose major purpose in this world is apparently to create thousands of mid-level executive millionaires at the expense of shareholders. These two companies alone have transferred more than $300 billion from shareholders to employees in their monetization of stock-based comp over the past ten years.

The hero in this story is Apple, the most prolific user of stock buybacks in the world (more than half a trillion dollars!), but a company that actually returns capital to shareholders with its buybacks rather than sterilizing outrageous stock-based comp.

Google has issued 1.7 billion new shares to employees over the past ten years, diluting its starting share count by 12.8%. Google has also bought back 1.9 billion shares with its $156 billion worth of buybacks, but because of the newly issued shares that only shrank the original share count by 1.2%.

Full article: https://www.epsilontheory.com/stock-buybacks-and-the-monetization-of-stock-based-compensation/