In early 2020, stories in the news were of companies lowering or eliminating dividend payments. However, these stories appear to be overblown concerning dividends. During the year, dividend payments reached a record of $503.1 billion. The economic slowdown did dramatically affect stock repurchases as buybacks in 2020 were only about $300 billion compared to the 3-year average of $700 billion. In the textbook, we discussed how repurchases allow a company more options than dividends when making payments stockholders and corporate payout actions in 2020 appear to support this argument.
