Dividends & Buybacks
Capital returned to shareholders — declared, authorized, executed, or quietly not executed.
A dividend exists when the board declares it, and its life spans four dates: declaration, ex, record, and payment. A buyback authorization is permission, not a commitment; actual repurchases appear in a monthly table in the next periodic report. The gap between what is announced and what is done is the theme's most reliable source of information.
In detail
Capital return is covered as an announcement and lived as an execution, and only the filings hold both. A repurchase authorization is a board decision to permit buying, sized in dollars or shares, often with no expiration and no obligation. Whether the company actually bought is disclosed in the issuer purchases of equity securities table in the 10-Q and 10-K, month by month, with average prices. Companies that announce large authorizations and repurchase nothing are common, and the table is the only place that shows it.
Dividends are similarly documentary. The declaration is an 8-K or a press release; the four dates are set at declaration; the source and tax character are reconciled later. A special dividend is not a raise. A dividend paid partly in stock is a preservation of cash, disclosed as such. A suspension is an 8-K. For funds and REITs, distribution composition disclosures reveal how much of a distribution is earnings and how much is return of capital. Capacity has documented limits too: debt covenants restricting payments and preferred arrears that must clear before common dividends resume are both in the filings.
What a filing-driven feed shows that headlines don't: the monthly repurchase table, which is the ground truth against every authorization headline; repurchases used to offset dilution from equity compensation rather than to reduce the share count, visible by comparing the table to the share count; Rule 10b5-1 issuer plans; dividend suspensions and reinstatements, which are 8-K events; distribution-composition notices; and the difference between the authorization's size and the company's actual free cash flow, which is arithmetic anyone can do from filed statements.
Signals: 8-K (Item 8.01, Item 2.02) · 10-Q / 10-K (issuer purchases table) · DEF 14A · 19a-1 notices (funds) · Schedule TO (self-tenders) · 424B
We report what was filed. We don't tell you what to do about it, and nothing here is investment advice.