Investors should know what really drives stocks. It turns out that one and only factor that ultimately drives stocks higher over time is not just good news. It’s not even investor sentiment, unemployment or GDP data. It’s not even earnings. It’s the money flow into a stock with more net buyers than there are net sellers. That’s all of it a nutshell. So what happens when companies with large stock buyback programs are their single largest buyers of their own stocks?
Oggonomics has tracked recent news releases concerning large stock buyback plans and how they can impact stocks over a period of time. Stock buybacks are sometimes more important than dividend yields. The rule of investing in buyback companies is fairly simple. Large buybacks as a percentage of the total float tend to matter the most. Less robust and periodic buyback plans which are a small percentage of the float tend to be immaterial.
The rules are admittedly a very broad generalization. That said, here are some stocks that have significant potential moves around multiple key stock buyback plans during April. The list is alphabetical by name, is not a complete list of all buyback news, this is not ranked in any order of importance.
ALPHABET… YOU KNOW, GOOGLE
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) managed to pass expectations in the most recent earnings report. The move was in light of an ongoing antitrust case, risks that the AI surge poses to its search dominance, and an ongoing risk of economic pressure from a weakening advertising spending climate in 2025 versus 2024. The parent of Google announced that it would spend another $70 billion to repurchase its own shares.
Alphabet’s current market cap is more than $1.9 trillion. At $160.50 as of this time, the stock initially rose from $147.67 at the start of last week ahead of earnings $155.35 ahead of earnings to $161.96 by the end of last week after the earnings and buyback. Alphabet’s 52-week range is $140.53 to $207.05.
BP’s OIL FOR BUYBACK MESS
BP PLC (NYSE: BP) is one of the top international oil stocks, and now the company is trying to shed its non-oil & gas operations to be focused as an energy stock. The problem with its latest earnings report is that BP said it was reducing its own stock buyback ambitions down to about $750 million per quarter from a more aggressive level of $1.75 billion per quarter.
BP’s market cap of $74 billion looks grossly different if it is buying back an annualized $3 billion instead of $7 billion. While the move may help bolster the balance sheet and help to keep capital for cutting a high debt, the market’s reaction punished its shares by as much as 3% in the initial reaction.
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GM’s BUYBACK INTERRUPTION
General Motors Company (NYSE: GM) may have beaten earnings expectations, but there is something worse than the company withdrawing any guidance based on the tariff news. General Motors is currently suspending its stock buyback program in an effort to conserve capital while it navigates through the ongoing tariff and risks of trade wars that can impact its costs, sales and capital levels. GM had committed to or had spent more than $15 billion in stock buybacks from 2023 up until the recent tariff uncertainty.
GM’s stock was under $30 late in 2023 and had risen to $60 by late-2024. And the current share price of $46.50 or so generates a market cap of less than $45 billion. GM may have spent more on buybacks than the 3 largest shareholders (Black Rock, Vanguard and State Street for 25% of the shares outstanding) combined total holdings as of the most recent data.
NOKIA WAS ITS BIGGEST FAN
Nokia Corporation (NYSE: NOK) is another international stock that might not be U.S. based. It has a large shareholder base here, and guess who was among its largest stock buyers in the last six-month period. Come on, you know it. It was Nokia itself. Nokia announced on April 23 that it had cancelled some 150,000,000 Nokia shares held in its Treasury. Those shares had been repurchased between November 25, 2024 and April 2, 2025 under its buyback plan announced last November.
While Nokia is still in a period of long-term transitions and has been out of favor from tech investors for some time, the proof is in the pudding here that buybacks can help. Nokia’s stock price (ADSs) of $4.15 before its buybacks commenced to $5.34 before the buybacks stopped represents a stock gain of more than 28%. Its ADSs were most recently trading back down around $4.95 — but buying 150 million shares would have been more shares than any U.S. asset management firm’s ownership at the end of 2024.
WELLS FARGO’s NEW LARGEST STOCK BUYER — ITSELF!
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is getting further and further away from its post-scandal days with more regulatory oversight terminations. This process has taken years and multiple management efforts to get there, and the firm is now operating more freely than several years ago. Along with its dividend announcement on April 29, Wells Fargo announced that it was initiating a new $40 billion stock buyback plan.
This represents a substantial buyback from Wells Fargo because the entire market cap of $228 billion at this time is nearly 17.5% of the total market cap of the stock. That is actually about the same percentage of its float as held by Vanguard and Blackrock as the two largest shareholders (in mutual funds and ETFs). Those two entities owned a combined 17.2% of the outstanding shares on last look. This new plan also appears to be larger than all that capital used on buybacks during the entirety of 2023-2024. Wells Fargo has a 52-week trading range of $50.15 to $81.50 and a $228 billion market cap.
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THE ETF PLAY… BUYBACK ACHIEVERS!
There is also an exchange-traded fund that tracks stock buybacks. The Invesco BuyBack Achievers ETF (NYSEArca: PKW) was last seen with only $1.15 billion in assets under management. With a share price of $110.25 on last look, it was last seen down just 3.9% year-to-date from its year-end adjusted close of $114.82 and it lowest close in April at the peak of the panic was $98.58.
The PKW ETF’s top 10 holdings are listed as follows:
- RTX Corporation (5.83%)
- Wells Fargo & Co. (5.21%)
- Comcast Corporation (5.01%)
- Booking Holdings (4.73%)
- Caterpillar Inc. (4.63%)
- PayPal Holdings (3.09%)
- HCA Healthcare (3.02%)
- Marriott International (2.75%)
- Bank of New York Mellon (2.74%)
- Hilton Worldwide (2.50%)
