Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Thursday, December 7th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan. Our top story so far.

End of year stock buyback announcements continue. The landscape looks less promising in 2024

when it comes to returning cash to shareholders. After announcing a 5.3% increase in its dividend, Bristol-Myers-Squibb authorized the repurchase of an additional $3 billion of its common stock under the company's multiple the

purchase of an additional $3 billion of its common stock under the company's multi-year repurchase program.

The announcement increases the total buyback authorization

to about $5 billion.

That comes on the heels of Northrop Grumman,

approving an additional $2.5 billion in buybacks,

increasing the outstanding authorized amount

to about 3.8 billion.

J.P. Morgan is predicting diminishing corporate enthusiasm, however, for both buybacks and dividends next year.

The Equity Team says, Buyback executions peaked in 2022, and corporates continue to recalibrate payouts given elevated

economic uncertainty, shrinking margins, higher cost of debt, and tight capital requirements

for financials.

They predict gross buybacks falling another 5% to about 750 billion dollars, down 50 billion

from 800 billion in 2023, and sharply lower from peak activity of 950 billion in 2022.

They say dividends will remain stable but there's little urgency to raise.

With stocks moving sideways for the last two years, there's little rush for

S&P 500 companies to increase dividends with the dividend yield of 1.6% near the

five-year average of 1.7%. You can find the companies most likely to increase

their dividends with Seeking Alpha's Quant ratings and screen against the

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