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

Happy Valentine's Day.

Today is Wednesday, February 14th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan.

Our top story so far.

Companies continue to show shareholders some love with sharery purchases and dividends,

and today Uber Chu Choo Chises Valentine's Day

to announce a $7 billion buyback.

Uber CFO Prashenath Mahendra Raja says,

Today's authorization of our first ever share repurchase program is a vote of

confidence in the company's strong financial momentum. We will be thoughtful as it

relates to the pace of our buyback, beginning with actions that partially

offset stock-based compensation

and working towards a consistent reduction in share count.

This comes on the heels of AirB&B announcing after the Bell Tuesday

that it plans to buy back up to six billion billion worth of common stock through a new program.

Big name buybacks have peppered this earning season.

Most notably, Meta announced a $50 billion buyback to go along with its inaugural dividend, Alibaba announced an additional

$25 billion a purchase. Disney's ward has authorized the company to start buying back shares

for the first time since fiscal 2018. Goldman Sachs says this

earning season has also highlighted a divergence between returning cash to

shareholders and cap-ex spending. After negative year-on-year growth for five consecutive quarters,

buybacks are tracking up 6% in Q4, driven by a combination of positive earnings growth,

...