Record Year for Stock Repurchases Could be at Hand in 2015

While General Electric's (NYSE: GE) announcement of a $50 billion buyback plan made headlines last week, the first quarter has been a strong one for new repurchase plans.

Birinyi Associates noted that Q1 buybacks came in at $257 billion, which was a record start to the year since the firm began tracking the metric. Should the pace continue, buybacks would be more than $1 trillion for 2015 and that would surpass the prior record of $863 billion set in 2007.

Notably, Birinyi's numbers exclude the GE buyback announcement.

While actual execution of buybacks is up to company treasurers and investment bankers, most of the authorizations are carried out. In 2014, it was reported that $677.5 billion of buybacks, or 81 percent of authorized repurchases, were carried out.

Buybacks reduce the outstanding number of shares available for trading and generally aim to bolster or bump up stock prices.

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