NVIDIA approves $150 billion in additional stock repurchase... Largest in U.S. corporate history

Nvidia announced that its board of directors approved an additional $150 billion for its existing stock repurchase program, increasing the total amount approved to $235 billion.

Accordingly, Nvidia's total share buyback approval size increased to $235 billion (approximately 320 trillion won).

The scale of this additional approval alone exceeds the $110 billion share buyback announced by Apple in May 2024.

NVIDIA's board of directors increased the share repurchase limit by $80 billion just four months ago, and significantly increased it again today.

NVIDIA explained that it plans to sequentially execute the share repurchase program until fiscal year 2028.

“Nvidia’s growth is driven by the once-in-a-generation platform shift to AI and accelerated computing,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. “With our strong cash generation, we can invest in related technologies while returning capital to shareholders.”

The market believes that NVIDIA has increased share repurchases as the 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio (PER) has become undervalued at only 16.5 times.

This means that the current stock price is 16.5 times the expected net profit for the next year. NVIDIA's average PER over the past 15 years was around 30x.

Accordingly, the company carried out a share buyback to protect the stock price and improve shareholder value.

Jacob Vaughn, an analyst at market research firm EMarketer, told Reuters, "The craze for building AI infrastructure will not continue at the same pace forever, but NVIDIA is sending a signal that demand for its hardware and services will continue."

When the news of the large-scale share purchase was announced, Nvidia's stock price surged by more than 3.6% at one point during the trading day, but it later gave back some of the gains and closed the regular trading day at $228.86, up 1.68% from the previous day's closing price.

NVIDIA, which dominates the graphics processing unit (GPU) for AI and semiconductor markets for data centers, is currently the largest company with a market capitalization exceeding $5.5 trillion.