Cash returned
Dividends plus buybacks - the cash sent to shareholders in the period, gross of any issuance.
Formula
Sum of |dividends paid| and |share repurchases| (tagged legs, same fiscal year)
Served as: annual. Annual and quarterly observations are never mixed unlabeled.
Where the inputs come from
- PaymentsOfDividends (fallback chain)
- PaymentsForRepurchaseOfCommonStock (fallback chain)
Listed highest priority first. Every served figure carries its filing, fiscal period and accession; open any value on the financials page to see them.
How to compare it honestly
Compare against the company's own history and its free cash flow in the same years.
When it is not served
A missing leg contributes nothing and is named - never a fabricated zero. No issuance-proceeds concept is extracted, so the figure is GROSS, never net of issuance.
Missing data is missing evidence: it is never shown as zero and never treated as a conclusion.
What it cannot tell you
Says nothing about the price paid for buybacks, their timing inside the year, or offsetting issuance.
Questions worth asking next
- How does the returned total compare with free cash flow in the same years?
- Does the share ledger show issuance offsetting the buybacks?
Research prompts, not recommendations.
See it computed from filings
Related in cash and conversion: Free cash flow · FCF conversion · Cash conversion of earnings · Total payout / FCF · Dividend payout
Definitions are descriptive and educational. Nothing here is a guaranteed signal or personalized investment advice. How the platform computes and cites every figure.