Really? Meta bought back less in 2022 than they did in 2021.

Stocks are priced on future events

Exactly.

Huh? I think you are confused.

People forget that stock buybacks also created a pool of equity for employee compensation, it isn't just about returning capital tax effectively.

The point is that there was no way to predict the level of stock buy backs announced.

You said there way no way to predict they could buy back so much.

But basing your expectations on 2021 would have done exactly that. So that argument is wrong.

If your real/amended argument is "no way to predict the level", as in predicting the exact amount, that's a much weaker argument that has barely any ramifications for investing. The specific amount is generally much less important than going over/under some threshold.

If it was so obvious large quantities of the stock would’ve been purchased even if the price was depressed. Were there any notable investors purchasing large quantities in expectation of this?

I didn't mean to imply it was obviously correct.

But it was obviously a plausible outcome.

Predicting it only took very simple and reasonable logic. "I bet the number stays the same."

A sports analogy: There's a game tomorrow where one team has 30% odds of winning. If someone bets on that team, nobody says "no one could have predicted that". It's obvious that it could happen, and it's plausible that it could happen. Tons of people predicted it.

And large quantities of the stock were purchased. There's tons of trading happening every day.

It's not like the people that expected a large buyback were acting in a vacuum. Stock value follows the average. To push the sports analogy, the team stock would still be going down even though many people are betting on them.

They barely bought more than last Q (500M more) and 3 times less than Q4-21. Nothing extraordinary with this buyback, they even have a few B authorized remaining.

The only surprise with the buyback streak since last year is how poorly executed it was. They dumped $45B ahead of anouncing a decrease in DAU, then trickled after it tanked the stock.

It isnt meant to support the stock, it is a compensation pool.

Neither, it's way higher then SBC and outstanding shares are decreasing.

It's cash returned to shareholders.

$7bn in Q4 is just like the $21bn in the three previous quarters - when the stock was going down - and doesn’t seem so unpredictable.

You could see they had free cash flow.

Is that a better use of capital than investments to grow the business?