Forum Home Page [see Broadridge note below]

 The Shareholder ForumTM`

Fair Investor Access

This public program was initiated in collaboration with The Conference Board Task Force on Corporate/Investor Engagement and with Thomson Reuters support of communication technologies. The Forum is providing continuing reports of the issues that concern this program's participants, as summarized  in the January 5, 2015 Forum Report of Conclusions.

"Fair Access" Home Page

"Fair Access" Program Reference

 

Related Projects 2012-2019

For graphed analyses of company and related industry returns, see

Returns on Corporate Capital

See also analyses of

Shareholder Support Rankings

 
 
 

Forum distribution:

Increasing attention to use of corporate capital for buybacks instead of production of goods and services

 

For the academic research referenced in the article below, see

The columnist provided a foundation for the investor concerns addressed in this research in August 12, 2016 New York Times | Fair Game: "A Simple Test to Dispel the Illusion Behind Stock Buybacks." Past Forum attention to these issues can be found in its "Buyback Analysis" workshop website and in the "Stock Buyback Policy" reference section of its project addressing a company-specific example.

 

Source: The New York Times | Fair Game, July 14, 2017 column

 


Business Day

Big Pharma Spends on Share Buybacks, but R&D? Not So Much


Fair Game

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON    JULY 14, 2017


Robert U. Ayres, left, and Michael Olenick found that companies’ heavy reliance on stock buybacks hurts corporate performance over the long haul. Roberto Frankenberg for The New York Times

Under fire for skyrocketing drug prices, pharmaceutical companies often offer this response: The high costs of their products are justified because the proceeds generate money for crucial research on new cures and treatments.

It’s a compelling argument, but only partly true. As a revealing new academic study shows, big pharmaceutical companies have spent more on share buybacks and dividends in a recent 10-year period than they did on research and development. The working paper, published on Thursday by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, is entitled “U.S. Pharma’s Financialized Business Model.”

The paper’s five authors concluded that from 2006 through 2015, the 18 drug companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index spent a combined $516 billion on buybacks and dividends. This exceeded by 11 percent the companies’ research and development spending of $465 billion during these years.

 

Fair Game

A column from Gretchen Morgenson examining the world of finance and its impact on investors, workers and families


The Trump Effect on C.E.O. Pay

May 26


Meet the Shareholders? Not at These Shareholder Meetings Mar 31

Want Change? Shareholders Have a Tool for That

Mar 24


Your Mutual Fund Has Your Proxy, Like It or Not

SEP 23 2016


EpiPen Price Increases Could Mean More Riches for Executives Sep 1

Bloated Pay Came Before Hain Celestial’s Error AUG 19

A Simple Test to Dispel the Illusion Behind Stock Buybacks Aug 12

Investors Get Stung Twice by Executives’ Lavish Pay Package

Jul 8


How to Gauge a C.E.O.’s Value? Hint: It’s Not the Share Price

Jun 17


Fantasy Math Is Helping Companies Spin Losses Into Profits

Apr 22


BlackRock Wields Its Big Stick Like a Wet Noodle on C.E.O. Pay

APR 15


In Yahoo, Another Example of the Buyback Mirage

Mar 25


Stock Buyback Plans, Seen as Shareholder Boon, Can Backfire

MAR 11


FASB Proposes to Curb What Companies Must Disclose

Jan 2

2016


Valeant Shows the Perils of Fantasy Numbers

OCT 30

2015


Safety Suffers as Stock Options Propel Executive Pay Packages

SEP 13


Why Putting a Number to C.E.O. Pay Might Bring Change

Aug 9


Tech Companies Fly High on Fantasy Accounting

Jun 21


Stock Buybacks That Hurt Shareholders

Jun 5


Shareholders’ Votes Have Done Little to Curb Lavish Executive Pay

May 16

2015


When the Stock Price Hides Trouble

Oct 12

2013


An Unstoppable Climb in C.E.O. Pay

Jun 30 2013


When Shareholders Make Their Voices Heard

Apr 8

2012


See More »

   

The authors contend that many big pharmaceutical companies are living off patents that are decades-old and have little to show in the way of new blockbuster drugs. But their share buybacks and dividend payments inoculate them against shareholders who might be concerned about lackluster research and development.

A few companies have spent more money repurchasing shares than they allocated to research over the period, the study found. They included Gilead Sciences, which spent $27 billion on buybacks versus $17 billion on research, and Biogen Idec, which repurchased $14.6 billion in stock and spent $13.8 billion on research and development.

“The key cause of high drug prices, restricted access to medicines and stifled innovation, we submit, is a social disease called ‘maximizing shareholder value,’” the study’s authors concluded.

This concept, the authors said, is actually “an ideology of value extraction.” And chief among the beneficiaries of the extraction are drug company executives, whose pay packages, based in part on stock prices, are among the lushest in corporate America.

“There’s no shortage of spending on R&D in the U.S. economy, and no shortage of spending on life sciences, even though it has declined somewhat in real terms,” one of the authors, William Lazonick, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, said in an interview. “But there really is very little drug development going on in companies showing the highest profits and capturing much of the gains.”

(The other authors are: Matt Hopkins, Ken Jacobson, Mustafa Erdem Sakinç and Öner Tulum, all researchers at the Academic-Industry Research Network, a nonprofit organization.)

While stock buybacks appear to be particularly troublesome among drugmakers, big companies in other industries — in sectors like banking, retail, technology and consumer goods, among others — are also buying back boatloads of their shares. Through May, some $390 billion in buybacks have been announced this year, $13 billion more than at this time in 2016, according to figures compiled by Jeffrey Yale Rubin at Birinyi Associates, a stock market research firm.

June 28 was the biggest single buyback announcement day in history. That was when 26 banks disclosed buybacks worth $92.8 billion, largely a response to having just passed the stress tests administered by the Federal Reserve Board. That figure blew past the previous record of $56.4 billion announced on July 20, 2006.

Many companies contend that stock buybacks are a great way to return value to their shareholders. Investors often agree. By reducing the equity outstanding at a company, the repurchases increase its per-share earnings, often giving a boost to its stock.

Buybacks made at low cost can be a fine use of a company’s capital. But when share repurchases replace a company’s research-and-development spending, that indicates its management is unable or unwilling to spend on innovation that could generate future earnings to shareholders.

As the buyback binge continues, another new academic study shows, a heavy reliance on them actually hurts corporate performance over the long haul. These researchers found that the more capital a business invests in stock repurchases based on its current market capitalization, “the less likely that company is to experience long-term growth in overall market value.”

“Secular Stagnation” is by Robert U. Ayres, emeritus professor of economics, political science and technology management at the global business school Insead, and Michael Olenick, a research fellow there. It compares the performance of companies that lean heavily on buybacks with those that do not.

Spending money on buybacks and dividends has increased among United States companies from negligible levels in the 1980s, the researchers said, to 38 percent of earnings in 2000. By 2011, buybacks had grown to 79 percent of earnings, rocketing to 110 percent in 2015.

The research looked at 1,839 large company buybacks from January 1990 through last month, examining 6,516 inflation-adjusted transactions. The academics then examined the amounts these companies had spent on repurchases compared with their current market capitalizations.

Mr. Ayres and Mr. Olenick found that 199 companies repurchased shares equal to at least half their current value. Some 64 companies spent over 100 percent of their current market capitalization on buybacks.

When the academics combined these companies’ current market values with the amounts they had spent on buybacks, the sum showed what the companies should have been worth if they had invested the money in a money-market account instead.

Fifty companies have spent more inflation-adjusted capital buying back stock than their businesses are currently worth in market value, the study found. Companies on this list include HP Inc., J. C. Penney and Sears Holdings.

By contrast, the research identified 269 strong performers that have repurchased stock worth just 2 percent or less of their current market values. They include Facebook, Xcel Energy, Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon.

Company executives who buy back large numbers of shares instead of investing in their businesses are committing corporate suicide, Mr. Olenick said. “When managers can’t create value in the business other than buying their own stock,” he said in an interview, “it seems like it’s time for a management change.”

His co-author, Mr. Ayres, said he suspected the buyback craze was rooted in executives’ laser focus on short-term results. “They have short-term expectations,” he said in an interview. “They’re in their jobs for a few years at most; they’re not really interested in the long-term future of the company.”

Share buybacks provide immediate gratification, the stock market equivalent of a sugar high. That makes them alluring in the short term. Until the crash that usually follows.


 

A version of this article appears in print on July 16, 2017, on Page BU3 of the New York edition with the headline: When Big Pharma Spends, Research Isn’t No. 1.

 


© 2017 The New York Times Company

Performance and Shareholder Support

The following graphs of competitive corporate performance and of shareholder voting support for executive compensation are presented for companies reported in the article, in the order of their initial text reference.

Full-size graphs of these and other companies you may select can be generated on the Shareholder Forum's websites for Returns on Corporate Capital™  and for Shareholder Support Rankings™. Definitions of both analyses are presented below.


♦ ♦ ♦


♦ ♦ ♦


♦ ♦ ♦


♦ ♦ ♦


♦ ♦ ♦


♦ ♦ ♦


♦ ♦ ♦


♦ ♦ ♦


♦ ♦ ♦

Returns on Corporate Capital™ Returns on Corporate Capital™ (ROCC) is based on published Methodology and Specifications for calculating net income plus interest expense and income taxes, divided by its prior year's ending balance of total assets less current liabilities other than current debt, according to each company's audited statements of GAAP-defined data as reported to the SEC, without adjustment. The ROCC of each company’s industry competitors is based on the same calculations of the aggregated assets and income for all SEC-reporting companies in the relevant industry other than the subject company. The analyses are produced by The Shareholder Forum using data provided by EDGAR Online from SEC records of approximately 8,000 reporting companies.

Shareholder Support Rankings™ analyses are produced by The Shareholder Forum from research data provided by Proxy Insight, based on company SEC reports of total votes cast in advisory “Say on Pay” shareholder approvals of executive compensation.

© Copyright 2012-2017 The Shareholder Forum, Inc.

 

 

 

This Forum program was open, free of charge, to anyone concerned with investor interests in the development of marketplace standards for expanded access to information for securities valuation and shareholder voting decisions. As stated in the posted Conditions of Participation, the purpose of this public Forum's program was to provide decision-makers with access to information and a free exchange of views on the issues presented in the program's Forum Summary. Each participant was expected to make independent use of information obtained through the Forum, subject to the privacy rights of other participants.  It is a Forum rule that participants will not be identified or quoted without their explicit permission.

This Forum program was initiated in 2012 in collaboration with The Conference Board and with Thomson Reuters support of communication technologies to address issues and objectives defined by participants in the 2010 "E-Meetings" program relevant to broad public interests in marketplace practices. The website is being maintained to provide continuing reports of the issues addressed in the program, as summarized in the January 5, 2015 Forum Report of Conclusions.

Inquiries about this Forum program and requests to be included in its distribution list may be addressed to access@shareholderforum.com.

The information provided to Forum participants is intended for their private reference, and permission has not been granted for the republishing of any copyrighted material. The material presented on this web site is the responsibility of Gary Lutin, as chairman of the Shareholder Forum.

Shareholder Forum™ is a trademark owned by The Shareholder Forum, Inc., for the programs conducted since 1999 to support investor access to decision-making information. It should be noted that we have no responsibility for the services that Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., introduced for review in the Forum's 2010 "E-Meetings" program and has since been offering with the “Shareholder Forum” name, and we have asked Broadridge to use a different name that does not suggest our support or endorsement.