No. of Recommendations: 2
"" Key Points
About This Summary
Largest US banks executed record quarterly stock repurchases of $40 billion in the first quarter, exceeding the 2019 record.
M&T Bank led with a 3.9% share reduction, followed by First Citizens (3.8%) and Citigroup (3.1%); the median bank repurchased 1%.
Buybacks encourage investors as banking stocks show mixed performance; the KBW Bank ETF is down about 1%, almost 10 percentage points behind S&P 500.
The country’s largest banks, flush with record earnings and capital, executed their largest quarterly stock repurchases ever in the first three months of the year.
The 21 large banks covered by Barclays analyst Jason Goldberg bought back $40 billion in the first quarter, up from $34 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025 and from the prior record of $38 billion in the 2019 fourth quarter, just before the Covid crisis.
The industry leaders, based on the biggest percentage reductions in share counts in the first quarter, were M&T Bank
MTB
+0.37%
(3.9% reduction), First Citizens Bancshares
FCNCA
-0.07%
(3.8%), Citi
C
+0.47%
group (3.1%), Bank of America (1.9%), and Goldman Sachs Group
GS
+0.11%
(1.8%).
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Barrons,
The buybacks are encouraging for investors amid a mixed performance for banking stocks this year. The Invesco KBW Bank exchange-traded fund is down about 1% this year, almost 10 percentage points behind the S&P 500
SPX
-0.16%
index. As many technology companies scale back or suspend their repurchases, financial stocks are one of the larger sources of buybacks in the S&P 500. Many banks have “total yields” of more than 5%, reflecting dividend yields in the 2% to 3% range plus ample stock buybacks.
The median bank in the group repurchased 1% of its shares, Goldberg wrote in a client note.
Among the largest banks, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley stocks have each gained about 6% this year, while JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America are down around 8% each.
The repurchases are continuing into the second quarter. First Citizens, Bank of America, M&T, and others continued to repurchase stock in April, based on share counts listed in their first-quarter 10-Q reports."
PLUS, do they pay a div? Is that called multitasking? Thank you.
