Repurchases

In the investor presentation, Cigna outlines that it plans to allocate around 70% of the future free cash flow towards share repurchases and strategic M&A so it is highly likely that the pace of repurchases will continue.

The company returned almost $300 million of capital to shareholders through regular and special dividends, as well as share repurchases resulting in growth in book value per share before dividends and repurchases of 7.2%.

And how should we think about, what that sort of endpoint is over the medium term, and the role of share repurchases, and potentially more RWA optimization?

And then of course, over the course of the year, we also had strong cash flow performance, which helped to add additional fuel to that fire through share repurchases.

As a reminder, the EPS guidance outlined by Greg earlier includes the impact of shares repurchased through this call but does not include any additional share repurchases.

As a result, the management has decided to pause stock repurchases in the fourth quarter and focus instead on maintaining liquidity.

As part of our broad capital allocation strategy, we remain committed to opportunistic market repurchases, guided by our intrinsic value based model.

Beyond share repurchases and paying down debt, we will also continue investing in the future of our brands and returning excess cash to shareholders through dividends.

For 2023, we will target returning 50% to 75% of free cash flow to investors through dividends and share repurchases.

Forward has also returned $635mm to shareholders in that time via dividends and share repurchases.

Given our strong outlook for free cash flow growth in 2023 and beyond, we expect share repurchases to continue to remain our highest ROIC opportunity for capital allocation.

How are you guys thinking about the utilization of the share repurchases going forward given that balance sheet growth appears to be more muted in 2023?

I'm a big fan of cannibal companies, ones who use buybacks the right way to boost EPS, but this is a case of unnecessary repurchases.

In actuality, as a point of reference, I believe that before NUE ends its Q1 2023 quarter, NUE will have returned to shareholders somewhere close to $460 million via share repurchases and dividends.

Interestingly, the company talked about its share repurchases before it executed them quickly, and in the 10-Q it disclosed paying $9.96 for 2.5 million shares purchased on the open market in September.

Last year, our capital allocation focus was on reinvesting in the business and share repurchases.

LegalZoom's free cash flow, stock repurchases, and zero debt are clear positives.

Microsoft's scale and profitability make it a promising long-term investment to hold, with potential for increased dividends and share repurchases.

On capital allocation, we returned $319 million to shareholders during the quarter, including $157 million of share repurchases.

Our performance together with our ongoing share repurchases, drove our book value per share higher to $44.80, up 27% year-over-year.