It's not as simple as looking at the stock of outstanding shares to determine issuance, as it's a net figure. In terms of new issuance, FB spends billions in s

It's not as simple as looking at the stock of outstanding shares to determine issuance, as it's a net figure. In terms of new issuance, FB spends billions in stock based compensation each year since 2012, all of these are new issuance under the equity incentive plan. It was ~$9.164B for FY2021 alone. In terms of buybacks, FB started buying back stocks in 2017 and has continued since. In FY2021, they spent ~$55.47B to buy back stocks. Therefore, outstanding shares have been decreasing since around 2020. But this doesn't mean the company stops issuing shares. The more stock prices fall, the more equity they would need to issue to compete for talent, or alternatively supplement with cash. Long term, stock prices is one of many measures of how the company would be able to raise capital (stock based compensation is an indirect way of raising capital). Data from Bloomberg: https://postimg.cc/Lq0sNCJV https://postimg.cc/Lq0sNCJV