The year 2022 brought its ups and downs: with the Russia-Ukraine war, U.S-China tensions, drastic changes in climate, and inflation, which was perhaps the most hyped of all. Although the magnitude of equilibrium was not achieved in many sectors, 2023 seems to bring back luck to the affected parties.

Multiple entities, after revealing strong Q4 2022 results, recently announced purchase of their own shares present in capital markets; a practice commonly known as “Share Buyback”. A company can commit this practice for several reasons: to strengthen its financial position, to increase share value, and to make shares seem more attractive to potential investors.

List of Entities

Amidst the uncertainties of the market, there are some companies that have surpassed analysts’ expectations. The most prominent among them are:

EXXON MOBIL CORP
META PLATFORMS INC
NOVO NORDISK A/S
SHELL PLC
GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC

EXXONMOBIL CORP

Founded back on Aug 5, 1882, ExxonMobil (XOM:US) is a multinational oil and gas conglomerate headquartered in Texas. With a market cap of approximately $452.65 billion, the company experienced substantial growth last year, with its shares rising by almost 60%.

On Feb 2, 2023, it announced plans to buy back up to $35 billion worth of its shares by the end of 2024, which caused its share price to accomplish an all-time high of $119.17 just one week later. The company also recently unveiled plans to build one of North America's largest recycling facilities, with the capability to process over 80 million pounds of plastic waste per year and to build advanced facilities that can process up to 1 billion plastic waste by 2026.

META PLATFORMS INC

Meta platform Inc. (META:US) is a multinational technology conglomerate which is considered to be one of the largest players in the global IT sector. With a Market Cap of around $449.62 billion, it is among the top traded stocks in the U.S. and currently trades at around $169 mark.

In the start of Feb ‘23, the company announced its plan for buying back shares worth nearly $40 billion on the market. The day the announcement was made, shares of META were trading at a value of nearly $148.03, but the day after, its stock price surged over 27% to a value of $188.77.

NOVO NORDISK A/S

Novo Nordisk A/S (NOVOB:DC) is a multinational pharmaceutical company based in Denmark. With a history span of nearly a century, the company is a major entity and possesses a current Market Cap of approximately $321.69 billion.

On the first day of Feb 2023, the pharma giant announced its decision to purchase almost 28 billion DKK worth of its shares from the market. The company disclosed its decision of share buyback when the share price was around 955.00 DKK. Just within one month of announcement, the stock touched it's all time high of 1010.40 DKK

In Sep 2022, the company signed a definitive agreement to acquire Biopharma firm “Forma Therapeutics” for an equity price of $1.1 billion or $20 per share - a firm specializing in research and development of new therapies for patients with sickle cell diseases. With the takeover, Novo Nordisk A/S also acquired etavopivat, a lead development candidate of Forma.

SHELL PLC

Shell PLC (SHEL:GB) is a global leader of the oil and gas industry with unequivocal interest in energy and petrochemical companies. Based in London, United Kingdom, the oil and gas giant is a major producer of biofuel in Brazil and has a current Market Cap of around $214.48 billion.

With strong Q4 2022 results, Shell PLC announced its share buyback program on Feb 2, 2023 when SHEL stock was trading at around 2,337.50 GBP. The company announced its intentions to purchase around $4 billion shares available in the market and to complete this transaction by the start of May 2023.

In July 2022, the Shell Nederland B.V and Shell Overseas Investment B.V subsidiaries finalized the decision to start building Holland Hydrogen 1 - the largest renewable hydrogen plant in Europe. The company plans for the plant to be completed and fully operational by the end of 2025.

GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS:US) is a leading global financial institution and investment bank based in New York, USA. Founded back in 1869, the firm has a market cap of about $116.69 billion and shares were trading at $365.53 on Feb 27, 2023.

The investment bank on Feb 27, 2023 announced its plan to repurchase its shares of almost $30 billion in worth. The shares were trading at $363.85 value before the announcement and the day later, they were valued at around $365.53. A very slight change in share price.

In April 2022, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. announced the completion of acquisition of NN Investment Partners from NN Group N.V. for a value of €1.7 billion. The acquisition strengthened the firm and helped in providing expanded product range and dedicated service to global clients.

Other Notable Entities

On Feb 15, 2023, Commonwealth Bank Australia (CBA:AU) made an updated announcement of a plan to buy back its securities traded on the market up to AUD 1.6 billion. It's worth mentioning that the bankintends to repurchase an aggregate total of AUD 3 billion, among which AUD 1.8 billion were purchased by Feb 15, 2023.

BP PLC (BP:GB) made two announcements on the same day in Feb to buy back its shares from the market. The first announcement was to repurchase its shares worth up to $2.75 billion by the end of April 2024 and the second announcement was to buy back around $675 million worth of shares by the end of September 2023.

Equinor ASA (EQNR:NO) disclosed its plan to launch its first tranche of share buy back programme on Feb 9, 2023. The objective defined is to repurchase nearly $1 billion worth of its shares available on the market.

Diageo PLC (DGE:GB) disclosed its plan to repurchase around £500 million of its shares by the end of June 2023.

Despite the fact that the year 2022 was full of swings and hurdles, this year seems to shine bright over capital markets, especially on the companies which faced troubles in the previous couple of years.

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