How Oracle Stock Returned $158B To Shareholders

Over the past decade, Oracle stock (NYSE: ORCL) has emerged as a premier capital-return engine, distributing a remarkable $158 billion to shareholders—the 9th highest total in corporate history.

This payout is composed of $35 billion in dividends and a massive $123 billion in share buybacks, representing roughly 31.5% of the company’s current market capitalization.

Supported by resilient cash flows from its shift to cloud-based infrastructure and database services, Oracle’s strategy emphasizes enhancing earnings per share through aggressive stock repurchases. While it trails leaders like Apple ($847 billion) and Microsoft ($368 billion) in sheer volume, Oracle’s consistent return of capital highlights a mature balance between funding its high-growth cloud and AI initiatives and rewarding its long-term investor base with reliable financial yields.

Why should you care? Because dividends and share repurchases signify direct, tangible returns of capital to shareholders. They also reflect management’s confidence in the company’s financial stability and capability to produce sustainable cash flows. Moreover, there are other stocks with similar attributes. Here’s a list of the top 10 companies ranked by total capital returned to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks.

Top 10 Stocks By Total Shareholder Return

For the complete ranking, visit Buybacks & Dividends Ranking

What do you notice here? The total capital returned to shareholders as a percentage of the current market cap seems inversely proportional to growth potential for reinvestments. Stocks like Meta (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) are achieving much higher growth, in a more consistent manner, in comparison to the others, yet they have returned a significantly lesser proportion of their market cap to shareholders.

That’s the drawback of high capital returns. While they are appealing, you must ask yourself the question: Am I sacrificing growth and sound fundamentals? Keeping this in mind, let’s analyze some figures for ORCL. (see Buy or Sell Oracle Stock for additional details)

• Revenue Growth: 11.1% LTM and 9.8% last 3-year average.
• Cash Generation: Nearly -21.6% free cash flow margin and 31.9% operating margin LTM.
• Recent Revenue Shocks: The minimum annual revenue growth in the last 3 years for ORCL was 6.4%.
• Valuation: Oracle stock trades at a P/E multiple of 32.5

_{*LTM: Last Twelve Months}

The table provides a good overview of what you receive from ORCL stock, but what about the associated risks?

ORCL Historical Risk

Oracle is not immune to significant declines. It dropped approximately 77% during the Dot-Com crash and more than 40% during both the Global Financial Crisis and the Inflation Shock. The corrections in 2018 and the Covid sell-off were also considerable, causing the stock to fall nearly 19% and 29%, respectively. Even with strong fundamentals, Oracle can experience significant downturns when conditions worsen. This serves as a reminder that no stock is entirely safe when market conditions unravel.

The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio, featuring a collection of 30 stocks, has consistently demonstrated stronger performance relative to its benchmark that includes all three – the S&P 500, S&P mid-cap, and Russell 2000 indices. Why is this the case? As a collective, HQ Portfolio stocks have delivered superior returns with lower risk compared to the benchmark index, providing a smoother experience, as seen in HQ Portfolio performance metrics.