Insurers Are Buying Back More Stock as Pricing Softens
Yahoo Finance ·
In the first half of 2026, Progressive ( PGR +0.38% ) bought back roughly $1 billion worth of its own stock. Chubb ( CB +0.20% ) bought back $1.37 billion in shares in the second quarter alone (bringing its first-half repurchases to $2.12 billion). Those numbers make Prudential 's ( PRU +2.31% ) $250 million in second-quarter share repurchases sound like chump change, even though that's still a massive amount of cash to devote to a stock buyback. Stock buybacks are often pitched as a way to return value to shareholders, and they are. However, there's another issue to consider here that may be just as important: Property and casualty insurance pricing is softening. When a company buys back its own stock, the number of shares in the market decreases. That sounds simple, but it's worth putting some numbers on this with a simple example. If a company has 100 shares and buys back 10, then there are only 90 shares left for investors to trade. That has a significant impact on any financial measures based on shares. For example, if the company earns $100 and it has 100 shares, then earning per share are $1. If that share count falls to 90 and it still earns $100, then earnings per share improves 11% to $1.11. That said, if earnings fall, stock buybacks remain beneficial. An earnings drop to $90, along with that 10 share buyback, would keep earnings per share at $1.
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