What if DVN had invested in other companies vs. plowing $4B into stock buybacks in late 2019? Here's a couple scenarios..
- if we had invested $4b in Amazon, it would have $6.9b today.
- if we had invested $4b in Telsa, it would have $31b today.
- if we had invested $4b in Sprint (America's worst "big" telecommunications company), it would have $5b today.
- if we had invested $4b in Kodak (yes, the company that makes film which virtually no one uses anymore), it would have $13b today.
- if it had invested $4b in Crocs (yes, the ugly, always out-of-style shoes that you can't even find barring garage sales and old folks homes), it would have $6.1b today.
- and if we had taken a market-basket investing approach using 2 "good" companies and 3 of the c-appiest out there (like the ones above), it'd have itself somewhere between $10 and $12b in cash.
With that money we could have bought all outstanding stock, settled all remaining debts, fire-sale'd all assets at 50% off low-market value, closed our doors and handed every remaining employee an envelope. That envelope would contain a thank-you note for their hard work, a termination notice, and a check for $5MM to ease the blow.
I know all of this is overly utopian ... but it makes you think. Doesn't it?