Authorizations Pickup; Actions Expected to be Slower

NEW YORK, Dec. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Standard & Poor's, the world's leading index provider, announced today that S&P 500 stock buybacks for the third quarter of 2009 rebounded 44% to $34.8 billion from the $24.2 billion spent during the second quarter of this year when the expenditures set their lowest level since the first quarter of 1998 (when Standard & Poor's first started tracking the data).

According to Standard & Poor's, preliminary results show that S&P 500 issues spent $34.8 billion on stock repurchases during the third quarter of 2009, representing a 61.2% decline from the $89.7 billion spent during the third quarter of 2008, and a 79.7% decline from the record $172.0 billion spent on stock buybacks during the third quarter of 2007.

"As the market continued to recover in the third quarter companies scaled up their buybacks from their anemic levels, but still maintained a low level of activity as cash conscious corporate strategists maintained a close watch, and grip, on expenditures," says Howard Silverblatt, Senior Index Analyst at S&P Indices.

Standard & Poor's has also seen a pickup in new buyback programs over the last two months which are authorizations from the board to management permitting them to execute stock buyback programs, but are not actual buys. Some of the authorizations are replacing expiring programs or those that have reached their limits.

"Standard & Poor's expects stock buybacks to increase in the range of 10% during the fourth quarter of 2009," notes Silverblatt. "However, for 2010, buybacks will continue to remain well below their 2007 peak levels with expenditures being highly correlated to the recovering economy."

Standard & Poor's also determined that during the third quarter of 2009, 195 issues participated in stock repurchase programs, up 15.4% from the second quarter. Additionally, for the second quarter in a row, none of the issues made the top 20 historical list for largest stock buybacks.

On a sector basis, Standard & Poor's notes that the Financials sector rebounded 80.2% from its second quarter stock buyback expenditures, but remains 92.4% below its third quarter 2007 level. Information Technology increased 121.5%, and now accounts for 30.2% of all buybacks, with Consumer Staples having the next highest expenditures at 19.2%. Energy, which was the biggest player in the second quarter, posted a 15.4% drop, with Exxon Mobil accounting for 93.7% of the sector's buybacks.

Historical S&P 500 buyback data can be found at: www.marketattributes.standardandpoors.com.

    S&P Indices
    S&P 500, $ U.S. BILLIONS, PRELIMINARYS IN BOLD

    PERIOD       MARKET OPERATING AS REPORTED                     DIVIDEND &
                  VALUE  EARNINGS    EARNINGS DIVIDENDS  BUYBACKS    BUYBACK
              $BILLIONS $BILLIONS   $BILLIONS $BILLIONS $BILLIONS      YIELD

    5 YEARS     $11,032    $3,166      $2,536    $1,117    $1,866       5.89%
    10 YEARS    $10,670    $5,510      $4,418    $1,874    $2,583       4.74%

    09/30/09P    $9,337   $139.37     $131.96    $47.21    $34.85       3.71%
    06/30/09     $8,045   $120.85     $118.22    $47.63    $24.20       5.17%
    03/31/09     $6,928    $87.78      $65.29    $51.73    $30.78       7.13%
    12/31/08     $7,852    -$0.78    -$202.11    $62.19    $48.12       7.48%
    09/30/08    $10,181   $142.90      $86.16    $61.44    $89.71       6.73%
    06/30/08    $11,163   $148.43     $112.15    $61.94    $87.91       6.88%
    03/30/08    $11,511   $144.63     $135.24    $61.72   $113.90       7.25%
    12/31/07    $12,868   $133.38      $68.53    $67.09   $141.71       6.49%
    09/30/07    $13,470   $184.13     $133.66    $61.21   $171.95       5.89%
    06/30/07    $13,350   $213.65     $194.30    $59.76   $157.76       5.44%
    03/31/07    $12,706   $200.23     $190.75    $58.53   $117.70       5.35%
    12/31/06    $12,729   $197.35     $181.65    $61.79   $105.18       5.16%

       *5 and 10 year market values are averages

    S&P Indices
    S&P 500 SECTOR BUYBACKS

    SECTOR $ MILLIONS       Q3,'09  Q2,'09  Q1,'09  Q4,'08  Q3,'08   CHANGE
                                                                    Q3,'09-
                                                                     Q3,'08
    Consumer Discretionary  $4,560  $2,350  $1,794  $1,847  $9,415  -$4,855
    Consumer Staples        $6,699  $4,013  $3,942  $4,627 $12,184  -$5,485
    Energy                  $4,520  $5,343  $7,953 $11,809 $16,128 -$11,608
    Financials              $2,108  $1,170    $620  $4,292  $5,978  -$3,870
    Healthcare              $3,414  $4,699  $7,728  $5,453  $8,331  -$4,917
    Industrials             $2,026  $1,681  $2,358  $7,524 $12,038 -$10,012
    Information Technology $10,535  $4,757  $6,103 $10,968 $21,996 -$11,461
    Materials                 $223    $159    $241  $1,433  $2,280  -$2,057
    Telecommunication
     Services                 $139     $13     $29     $87  $1,092    -$953
    Utilities                 $624     $10     $14     $79    $269     $355
    S&P 500                $34,848 $24,195 $30,783 $48,117 $89,711 -$54,863

    S&P Indices
    S&P 500 20 LARGEST Q3 2009 BUYBACKS, $ MILLIONS, CURRENT MEMBERSHIP

    COMPANY                      SECTOR                  Q3,'09     Q4,'04-
                                                                     Q3,'09
    Exxon Mobil Corp             Energy                  $4,233    $136,382
    Wal-Mart Stores Inc          Consumer Staples        $2,313     $18,060
    Hewlett-Packard Co           Information Technology  $2,102     $36,940
    Cisco Systems, Inc           Information Technology  $1,869     $39,131
    Intel Corp                   Information Technology  $1,673     $28,965
    Microsoft Corp               Information Technology  $1,540     $77,910
    CVS Caremark Corp            Consumer Staples        $1,539      $6,932
    Philip Morris Int'l          Consumer Staples        $1,408      $9,514
    Travelers Co                 Financials                $971      $8,060
    DIRECTV Group, Inc           Consumer Discretionary    $943      $7,809
    Int'l Business Machines Corp Information Technology    $929     $50,545
    McDonald's Corp              Consumer Discretionary    $769     $13,492
    WellPoint Inc                Healthcare                $693     $16,124
    Entergy Corp                 Utilities                 $613      $4,415
    AutoZone Inc                 Consumer Discretionary    $587      $3,916
    Time Warner Inc              Consumer Discretionary    $506     $23,040
    St. Jude Medical Inc         Healthcare                $500      $2,500
    United Technologies Corp     Industrials               $430      $9,494
    Chubb Corp                   Financials                $403      $5,448
    Lockheed Martin Corp         Industrials               $393     $10,114
    Top 20                                              $24,414    $508,790
    S&P 500                                             $34,848  $1,866,474
    Top 20 % of S&P 500                                   70.06%      27.26%

About S&P Indices

S&P Indices, the world's leading index provider, maintains a wide variety of investable and benchmark indices to meet an array of investor needs. Over $1 trillion is directly indexed to Standard & Poor's family of indices, which includes the S&P 500, the world's most followed stock market index, the S&P Global 1200, a composite index comprised of seven regional and country headline indices, the S&P Global BMI, an index with approximately 11,000 constituents, and the S&P GSCI, the industry's most closely watched commodities index. For more information, please visit www.standardandpoors.com/indices.

About Standard & Poor's

Standard & Poor's, a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), is the world's foremost provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research and data. With offices in 23 countries and markets, Standard & Poor's is an essential part of the world's financial infrastructure and has played a leading role for nearly 150 years in providing investors with the independent benchmarks they need to feel more confident about their investment and financial decisions. For more information, visit http://www.standardandpoors.com.

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