Buyback Yield Leaders
Buyback yield — the value of a company's trailing-12-month share repurchases divided by its current market cap — is the share-buyback equivalent of dividend yield. It tells you how much capital management chose to return to shareholders through buybacks alone.
Aggressive buybacks can be very shareholder-friendly when funded with real free cash flow and executed at reasonable valuations. They can also be value-destructive when funded with debt or executed near all-time highs. This screen surfaces the top buyback-yield names that pass a quality filter and have positive trailing free cash flow — the ones most likely to be sustainable shareholder-return programs. Cross-reference with the methodology on dividends and total return.
Criteria
- Buyback yield: Top decile by trailing-12-month common-stock repurchases divided by current market cap
- Quality score: Tessera Rating ≥ 60 / 100
- Profitability floor: Positive free cash flow over the trailing twelve months
- Universe: US-listed equities, market cap above $2B
Underlying methodology
See the current top 10 stocks for this screen
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Sign up freeFrequently asked questions
What is buyback yield?
Trailing-12-month value of common-stock repurchases divided by current market cap. It is the share-buyback equivalent of dividend yield: how much capital the company returned to shareholders over the past year through buybacks alone.
Why filter by free cash flow?
Companies that fund buybacks with debt or by drawing down cash reserves can boost EPS short-term but weaken the balance sheet. Requiring positive FCF ensures the buyback is funded out of real cash generation, which is sustainable.
Are buybacks always shareholder-friendly?
No. Buybacks executed near all-time highs destroy value. Buybacks funded with debt at high interest rates dilute future flexibility. Buybacks that come at the expense of capex or R&D can hurt long-term competitiveness. The quality filter helps screen out the most obvious of these patterns, but always sanity-check management's capital allocation track record.