Bought back $4.6B of its own shares, 28.1× what it paid in stock
Dilution: new shares, stock pay and buybacks
Shares offered
Since Nov 12, 2023: 1 shelf registration.
- May 5, 2026 Shelf registration: shares and other securities, amount not fixed S-3ASR
Every offering filing →“We may offer, issue and sell the types of securities set forth above from time to time, together or separately.”
S-3ASR, May 5, 2026 ↗
Diluted shares: 472.19M in the year to Dec 31, 2025 2025 -2.1%2024 -2.1%2023 -2.3%2022 -3.4%
Change in the diluted weighted average share count from the fiscal year before, stock splits taken out. Bars use one scale for stock pay and buybacks. Prospectuses are read from their cover page; preliminary ones are left out. Cash & buybacks, year by year → · How
Where the cash came from and where it went
FY2023 to FY2025, from the cash flow statements in the 10-Ks, added up.
Came from
| Operating cash flow | $29.1B |
| Debt raised | $12.2B |
| Shares sold | $87.0M |
| Cash on hand used | $380.0M |
Went to
| Capital spending | $13.5B |
| Acquisitions | $1.7B |
| Buybacks | $13.0B |
| Dividends | $7.9B |
| Debt repaid | $5.3B |
| Other, net investments bought and sold, other financing and investing lines, and exchange rates |
$244.0M |
Each number is a line of the cash flow statement as the company tagged it. "Other, net" is what those lines do not cover (investments bought and sold, other financing and investing lines, and exchange rates); Tickdelta does not estimate it.
What the 10-Ks show for each CEO's years
The CEO of each fiscal year as named in the proxy's pay versus performance table, and what the 10-Ks show for those years.
Sanjiv Lamba
- Operating cash flow
- $37.9B
- Capital spending
- $16.7B
- Acquisitions
- $1.8B
- Buybacks
- $18.2B
- Dividends
- $10.3B
- Stock-based pay
- $572.0M
- Diluted shares since FY2021
- -9.5%
- Revenue since FY2021
- +10%
- Debt since FY2021
- +$13.4B
- CEO pay (reported)
- $76.6M
Buybacks, dividends and share count
| Fiscal year to | Buybacks | Dividends | Stock pay | Shares issued for cash | Diluted shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-12-31 | $4.6B | $2.8B | $164.0M | $23.0M | 472.19M |
| 2024-12-31 | $4.5B | $2.7B | $160.0M | $31.0M | 482.09M |
| 2023-12-31 | $4.0B | $2.5B | $141.0M | $33.0M | 492.29M |
| 2022-12-31 | $5.2B | $2.3B | $107.0M | $36.0M | 504.04M |
| 2021-12-31 | $4.6B | $2.2B | $128.0M | $50.0M | 521.88M |
From the XBRL of the 10-Ks (cash flow statement and diluted weighted average shares); each year as reported in the latest 10-K that includes it. Concepts: buybacks = PaymentsForRepurchaseOfCommonStock; dividends = PaymentsOfDividendsCommonStock; sbc = AllocatedShareBasedCompensationExpense; issuance = ProceedsFromIssuanceOfCommonStock; diluted_shares = WeightedAverageNumberOfDilutedSharesOutstanding.
What it paid for each share it bought back
What LIN paid on average for each share it bought back, each fiscal year: dollars spent divided by shares bought, both from the 10-K.
| Fiscal year to | Shares bought | Spent | Average price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-12-31 | 12.02M | $2.7B | $220.87 |
Shares and dollars from the statement of shareholders' equity (the cash flow line also counts shares withheld for taxes, so it is not used). Share counts filed before a stock split are put on today's count. A year where the 10-K does not tag both numbers is left out. The latest year with both numbers tagged is 2019.