BOBOO REPORT · #07 Shareholder returns Big Picture
The Map of Fruit
Read markets as if viewing a forest from the sky
Global Treasury shares Value-up (Korea's corporate value-up program)
Aug 1, 2026 (Sat) · The Big Picture — an old proposition, rather than today's prices
There is an old reason to buy US stocks: “They return more to shareholders than anyone else.” (translated) The throne of dividends and buybacks — shareholder payouts — long belonged to the US. Is that still true? We toured five forests and counted the baskets of fruit: 8 years of ledgers, from 2018 through 2025.
01
How to Use the Ruler
Payout = fruit (dividends) + fewer trees (buybacks), divided by the forest's value (market capitalization)
Fruit — dividends
Share the cash
Distribute the forest's annual fruit directly to its owners. Visible and easy to count.
Fewer trees — treasury shares
Reduce the share count
A company that buys and cancels its shares increases the remaining owners' stake. The same forest, fewer ownership claims: an invisible payout.
The ruler's limits — stated up front
Markets keep different ledgers. Where a common ruler is unavailable, we record a lower bound — at least this much
Market
Dividends
Treasury shares
Meaning
US
Observed (all SEC-listed companies)
Observed (gross)
Most complete, but gross slightly overstates
Korea
Observed (DART, bottom-up)
Provisional (decision disclosures)
Lower-bound character
Japan
Provisional (ETF distributions)
TTM only (EDINET stores 12 months)
lower bound — Actual is higher
Europe
Provisional (ETF distributions)
Not acquired
lower bound — Actual is higher
China
Provisional (ETF distributions)
Not acquired
lower bound — Judgment withheld
Why this table matters: the finding below that US leadership is shrinking holds even while understating its competitors.
02
Five Forests' Scorecard
Total shareholder payout yield, 2018–2025 — dotted lines are lower bounds missing buybacks
The forests are converging
The blue US line descends toward the others. China is separate because measurement is incomplete (below)
US (observed)Japan (lower bound, dotted)Korea Europe (lower bound, dotted)
View table
Year
US
Japan*
Korea
Europe*
2018
5.78%
1.97%
2.64%
3.03%
2021
3.49%
1.77%
1.75%
2.23%
2024
3.31%
1.98%
2.67%
2.79%
2025
3.06%
1.94%
1.61%
2.54%
* Dividend-only lower bounds
How much of the old belief remains — the us_premium gauge
US yield minus the highest other yield. This spread measures the size of the US-is-No.1 rule
In 8 years it shrank to 2.75pp → 0.53pp, one-fifth. Even that is an overstatement because competitors are measured at lower bounds.
03
The US — Anatomy of the Reversal
Companies are not paying less. Prices rose faster than payouts
Yet the median company is 0% — payouts are polarized
Dollar amounts total all companies reporting to the SEC; the dividend component of yield uses S&P 500 realized dividend yield. Thus, amount divided by market cap differs slightly from the yield.
The reversal's arithmetic — numerator and denominator
2018 → 2025: what grew, and by how much?
Payouts in dollars rose +32%. Market cap simply rose +173%. The main cause of the halved yield was denominator.
Not yet in the ledger — will AI investment crowd out payouts?
US companies used both hands through 2025. The 2026 ledger will test crowding-out
In full-year 2025, capex/operating cash flow was 43.5%, highest in the 8-year ledger, while payouts/operating cash flow was also 62.7%, highest in the 8-year ledger. Companies increased investment and payouts at once in the same year, using debt and cash. This ledger alone cannot tell us whether capex crowds out payouts. We will count again in 2026 to see whether the ratios diverge.
04
Japan — The Moment It Reached the Same League
The headline finding
Japan buyback yield (annualized execution)
1.77%
JPY 21.1 trillion/year
Annualized actual EDINET monthly executions over 10 months
US buyback yield (2025)
1.78%
—
The same to the second decimal place
For 30 years, the received wisdom was that Japanese companies only hoarded cash. After 3 years of TSE reforms, Japan's buybacks relative to market cap are as large as the US. Add dividends (a 1.94% lower bound) and total payout reaches ~3.7%. Even this lower-bound measure exceeds the US (3.06%) by +0.65 percentage points. One caveat: 21% of the latest 12 months is Toyota's single TOB (JPY 3.66 trillion). Exclude it and the figure is still 1.40% — 80% of the US.
05
Korea — A Country of Slopes
The fastest-changing forest is still the least generous
Companies reducing share counts — 5x in 6 years
The clearest trace of value-up and Commercial Act reforms (top-market-cap panel, same rules as the US)
2019: 5.8% → 2025: 31.7%. The US (41.7%) is already in sight. Annual buyback acquisition decisions rose from KRW 4.2 trillion (2018–23 average) to KRW 14.8 trillion (2025), or 3.5x.
Yet total payout yield is 1.61%, last of five forests. Dividends rose +82% over 8 years, but market cap rose +219%. No contradiction: value-up's success in revaluing prices pulls down the yield measure. Korea sits in this paradox: the steepest direction among five forests, and the lowest level.
06
Europe and China — A Quiet No.1 Contender, an Unknown Forest
One basket is already heavy; the other has not yet been counted
Europe — shares quietly shrinking for 3 consecutive years
Dividend-only lower bounds are already 2.5–2.8% (runner-up in most years), while 2023–25 saw 3 consecutive years of share-count shrinkage. Once buyback data are added, Europe may rank 1st in total payouts.
China — dividend lower bound
1.85%
Measurement incomplete
Buyback growth after the national 9-point policy is qualitative only; no aggregate A-share source acquired
China's basket
?
Left blank
We do not pretend to know what we do not. Acquiring a source comes next
07
Verdict — Still True, but on the Boundary
The US remains No.1 in dollars returned and payout yield. The yield gap has narrowed to the boundary
Proposition
Judgment
Evidence
“The US returns the most dollars to shareholders”
Still true
2025: $2.03 trillion — highest in the 8-year ledger, overwhelmingly 1st
"US stocks have the highest payout yield"
Still true — on the boundary
Ranked 1st every year in the 2018–2025 annual ledger. But the gap to 2nd place shrank from 2.75pp to 0.53pp. Competitors' annual figures are lower bounds; adding Japan's latest 12 months could change the ranking. We will judge again using annual ledgers for the same period.
The rule has not broken. But the gap to 2nd place has narrowed sharply. Between 2018 and 2025, the US fell −2.72%p, Korea −1.03pp, Europe −0.49pp and Japan −0.03pp. Convergence came mainly from the larger US decline rather than other markets rising. US dollar payouts grew 32% over the period; market cap grew 173%. Institutions — TSE reforms, value-up and the Commercial Act — first show up in buyback decisions and share counts, ahead of yields.
08
What to watch
Dates when this map will be redrawn
1
Full-year 2026 — check capex and payout changes
Whether capex/OCF and payouts/OCF move in opposite directions tests the §03 hypothesis. Company-level ledgers will establish whether AI investment caused it.
2
Japan monthly buybacks — after the Toyota effect
If annualized execution in months without the TOB holds above 1.4%, parity is structural, rather than a one-off.
3
Korea's deadline for existing treasury-share cancellation
Track actual cancellation disclosures before the deadline for existing holdings (around September 2027) under the mandate effective March 2026. Shareholder-approved holding plans and similar cases are exceptions.
4
Acquire Chinese/European buyback sources
Fill those two empty baskets and us_premium will be recalculated lower than today.
5
The sign of us_premium
The day 0.53pp crosses 0 and turns negative is the old belief's official retirement date.
