Applied Materials Delivers Yet Another Large Stock Buyback Plan

Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) announced after the close of trading on Thursday that the chip equipment company’s board of directors has approved a new $2 billion share buyback program. What stands out here is that this is after Applied Materials has already spent massive money buying back stock in the last year.

The announcement which was made is said to be following the completion of the $3 billion share repurchase program which was originally approved by the company back on April 26, 2015.

Here is what really stood out about its ongoing buybacks. Applied Materials said that it has distributed more than $3.2 billion in the form of dividends and share repurchases over the past calendar year.

If Applied Material were to be able to execute all of the shares at once, and based upon the closing price of $24.42, it would represent some 81.9 million shares that it could repurchase. The company said in its release that it had approximately 1.1 billion shares of common stock outstanding.

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As far as how much a $2 billion buyback looks in the grand scheme of things, Yahoo! Finance showed its market cap as being $26.6 billion. That translates to another 7.5% of its outstanding shares, minus whatever shares get issued from stock options or other awards.

While the dividend rate is that same, Applied Materials did maintain its quarterly cash dividend of $0.10 per share. That dividend will be  payable on September 15, 2016 to shareholders of record as of August 25, 2016.

In its last quarter alone, Applied Materials generated $481 million in cash from operations. It also paid dividends of $113 million and used $900 million to repurchase 45 million shares of common stock.

It was just back on May 19 that Applied Materials rose handily after earnings. It had generated its highest new orders in 15 years – at $3.5 billion. They also projected record earnings ahead. Applied’s backlog increased 34% to $4.17 billion and included positive adjustments of $58 million tied mostly to favorable foreign currency impact.

Robert Halliday, senior vice president and CFO of Applied Materials, said:

We are confident in our ability to drive profitable growth as our strengths in materials engineering enable critical technology inflections in our markets. Our new $2 billion share repurchase program and the dividend demonstrate Applied’s ongoing commitment to deliver attractive cash returns to shareholders.

Applied Materials shares closed up 0.8% at $24.42 and the stock was last seen up 1.5% at $24.79 in Thursday’s after-hours trading session. Applied Materials has a consensus analyst price target of $26.25 and has a 52-week range of $14.25 to $24.65.

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