Wal-Mart's Mother of All Buybacks (WMT)

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) gave shareholders a surprise at this morning’s annual shareholder meeting.  The retail giant announced that it was going to repurchase up to $15 billion worth of common stock.

This program will replaces the previous $15 billion program that was announced June 1, 2007.  The prior program had approximately $3.4 billion of remaining authorization to be used, so Wal-Mart is essentially saying that it repurchased about $11.6 billion over the last two years. It confirmed that it has spent about $21 billion in share buybacks in the last five years.

Under the program, repurchased shares are constructively retired and returned to unissued status.

Wal-Mart will also pay more than $4.2 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends in this fiscal year as it is paying an annual dividend of $1.09 per share this fiscal year.  That represents a 15% increase from the $0.95 dividend paid out last year, as had been announced earlier this year.

Jon C. Ogg
June 5, 2009