Shareholder return
Shareholder return is the total cash a company handed back to its owners during the year, counting buybacks alongside dividends.
How it is computed here
| Formula | dividends paid + net share buybacks |
|---|---|
| Unit | Currency amount |
| Period | One fiscal year, as reported |
| Source | Extracted from SEC filings; every value on an asset page carries the accounting tag and the filing it came from |
| Identifier | retorno_ao_acionista |
What goes into the formula
| Dividends paid | Cash paid out on common stock, from the cash flow statement. |
|---|---|
| Net share buybacks | Repurchases less issuance. Where the net figure is negative — the company took in more stock money than it returned — it is counted as zero here rather than as a reduction of the dividend, because a dividend that was paid was paid. |
A formula without its inputs explained is decoration. Where an input is missing from a filing, the metric is left empty here rather than completed with a zero or an estimate.
How to calculate shareholder return, step by step
A company that returns most of its cash through buybacks.
| Dividends paid | $1,200M |
|---|---|
| Net buybacks | $3,400M |
| Net income | $5,000M |
| Free cash flow | $5,600M |
- Shareholder return = 1,200 + 3,400 = $4,600M.
- As a share of profit = 4,600 ÷ 5,000 = 92%.
- As a share of free cash flow = 4,600 ÷ 5,600 = 82%.
- Reading the dividend alone would have said 24% of profit.
Result: $4,600M returned — nearly four times the dividend
Anyone judging this company by its dividend would conclude it retains three quarters of its earnings. It retains eight per cent.
The figures in this example are illustrative and rounded — they are not a real company. The real figures on this site are the live ones below and on every asset page, each carrying the filing it came from.
What shareholder return is good for
This is the honest total for an American company. Since buybacks overtook dividends as the main channel of return, a dividend-only view systematically understates what shareholders receive and systematically overstates what is being reinvested.
What this number does not tell you
Returning cash is not by itself good or bad: it is capital not being reinvested, and whether that is right depends entirely on what the company would have done with it. The figure also says nothing about who received it — a buyback pays only the holders who sold, while a dividend reaches everyone. And a company can return cash it did not earn, by borrowing; read this beside free cash flow. Returning cash and generating it are separate questions. Of the 1,022 companies here reporting dividends, net buybacks and free cash flow for the same year, 341 — a third of them — returned more to shareholders than the business produced. The difference came from cash on hand or from borrowing. A large return figure describes what left the company, not what the company earned.
Every metric on this site is published with its blind spot stated. A figure without its limit is half a fact.
Highest reported shareholder return
| AAPLApple Inc. | $106.1B |
|---|---|
| GOOGAlphabet Inc. | $55.8B |
| GOOGLAlphabet Inc. | $55.8B |
| JPMJPMORGAN CHASE & CO | $48.2B |
| MSFTMICROSOFT CORP | $46.7B |
| NVDANVIDIA CORP | $41.1B |
| XOMExxonMobil Holdings Corp | $37.5B |
| METAMeta Platforms, Inc. | $31.6B |
From the most recent fiscal year of each company. Only companies reporting in US dollars are ranked here — a figure in yen or won is not larger, it is in another currency.
See it in a published filing
These pages show the figure across up to nineteen fiscal years, with the accounting tag and the filing behind every value.