By Davit Kirakosyan
Investing.com -- Here is your Pro Recap of the biggest share-buyback announcements from the past week you may have missed on InvestingPro. Start your free 7-day trial to get this news first.
Snowflake announces $2 billion buyback, shares drop on guidance miss
Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) announced a $2B stock repurchase program on Wednesday. On the same day, it reported better-than-expected Q4 results, but its Q1 and full 2024-year product revenue guidance missed expectations, which resulted in a share price drop of more than 12% on Thursday.
Raymond James cut its price target to $170 from $180 to reflect a reduced revenue outlook. Meanwhile, Wolfe said the results were "solid," but still slashed the price target by $5 to $160 per share.
Chevron raises its share repurchases target rate
Chevron (NYSE:CVX) said it will buy back stock at a targeted rate of $17.5B starting in Q2, up from its prior level of $15.2B in the final three months of last year. Its guidance range for buybacks was also bumped up to between $10B and $20B per year. The company expects to see high-return production growth that could help offset a recent slip in crude prices.
Jefferies believes Marathon Petroleum can buy 38% of the market cap through 2025
Jefferies upgraded Marathon Petroleum (NYSE:MPC) to Buy from Hold and raised its price target to $157 from $134 on Friday, noting that the company can buy back 38% of the market cap through 2025.
In 2022, the company returned approximately 75% of OCF (pre-WC) to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. "Assuming a similar cadence in '23-'25, we see MPC generating cumulative OCF (pre-WC) of $35bn and repurchasing ~$23bn or ~38% of its market cap through 2025 (Ex-2). At these levels, MPC will be able to maintain a cash balance sufficiently above its minimum threshold,” said the firm.
3 more share repurchases
Valmont Industries (NYSE: NYSE:VMI) shares rose more than 2% on Tuesday after the company authorized to purchase up to $400M of its shares once the current authorization is completed, as well as increased its dividend by 9% to $0.60 per share, or $2.40 annualized.
Shares closed the week with more than a 7% gain.
Jackson Financial (NYSE:JXN) announced an increase of $450M to its existing share repurchase authorization (nearly $90M is remaining as of Feb 22). Furthermore, the company hiked its dividend by 13% to $0.62 per share of common stock.
Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) announced an incremental share repurchase of up to an additional $250M.
Shares dropped more than 15% on Thursday after the company reported its Q4 results. While EPS came in better than expected and revenues only slightly missed the estimates, the company guided 2024 revenue growth at mid to high single digits, which disappointed investors.
