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Doesn’t this mean, fewer shareholders get to keep bigger profits? Like public companies sliding the scale towards private companies to give fewer people more p

• adventured 8y ago
  Not necessarily fewer shareholders. Fewer shares is the only certainty there. If the company is returning eg $6b per year in profit, in the form of a dividend, then that distribution is going to fewer shares as they're repurchased. Microsoft for example has had an enormous repurchase program over two decades. They've bought back something like $150 billion of stock. Yet they can have more shareholders today than when they began the first repurchase program. That's because new public investors can continue to come in. Also, formerly large ownership positions can be sold out of, de-concentrating it (eg Gates donating shares to his foundation, which then sells the shares, plausibly to a lot of new owners over time). Consider Johnson & Johnson. They could buy back their shares for 50 years and still end up with more total shareholders, as people are very attracted to their persistently rising dividend.