Share Count Trends

Buybacks vs. dilution across the S&P 500, read from quarterly shares-outstanding history. Share count already reflects every buyback, issuance and option exercise, so no separate buyback-dollar data is needed.
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Avg. 1-Year Share Count Change
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Simple average across companies
Buybacks vs. Dilution
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Of companies classified
Year-over-Year Persistence
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Pearson r, last year's change vs. this year's
Active Buyback Streaks
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Companies with 2+ consecutive years shrinking share count

Average 1-year share count change by sector

Negative means net buybacks (fewer shares outstanding). Positive means net dilution.

Does last year's buyback/dilution rate predict this year's?

Each point is one company. X is the prior non-overlapping year's share-count change, Y is the most recent year's. Same non-overlapping annual setup as the momentum test on Factor Analysis.

Biggest buybacks

Largest 3-year cumulative reduction in shares outstanding
SymbolSector1Y3Y
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Biggest dilution

Largest 3-year cumulative increase in shares outstanding
SymbolSector1Y3Y
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All companies with balance-sheet history on file

1/3/5-year cumulative share-count change, full S&P 500
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Symbol Sector 1Y▾ 3Y▾ 5Y▾ Classification▾ Streak▾
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Methodology

Data. The universe is the S&P 500. For each company, Alpha Vantage's BALANCE_SHEET endpoint returns commonStockSharesOutstanding for each of the last ~21 quarterly filings. Share count at 1/3/5-year lookbacks is read from the filings 4/12/20 quarters back. This captures the net effect of buybacks, new issuance and stock-based-compensation dilution together, which is what matters to an existing shareholder's ownership stake. A company can announce a large buyback and still show a rising share count if stock-based comp outruns it. This page shows that as net dilution.

A company is classified "buyback" if its share count fell >0.5% over the trailing year, "dilution" if it rose >0.5%, and "flat" in between. The threshold is there because share counts move slightly from routine option exercises and rounding even with no capital-allocation story.

Persistence. The year-over-year check takes each company's two most recent non-overlapping annual share-count changes and runs the Pearson/Spearman regression from Factor Analysis. A positive, significant relationship means a company's buyback (or dilution) pace tends to continue from year to year. Non-overlapping periods matter because overlapping windows share data points and inflate apparent persistence (see Factor Analysis).

Refreshes weekly (Saturday morning), since a share count only changes when a company files a new 10-Q or 10-K. Sector and company name come from Sector Beeswarm.

Source: Alpha Vantage: BALANCE_SHEET