Stock buybacks are generally bullish for shareholders. In addition to signaling that a company's management may view its stock as undervalued, share repurchase programs also reduce the number of shares outstanding and, by extension, can increase earnings per share.
Recently, Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), DocuSign (NASDAQ: DOCU), and Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM)—three big names in the tech sector that have all experienced dramatic drawdowns this year—announced massive buyback programs that should be catching investors' attention.
As all three have fallen at least 30% from their respective 52-week highs, their management teams are signaling confidence through huge buyback announcements at levels they likely see as depressed and likely to reverse.
Salesforce Announces Record $25 Billion Accelerated Repurchase
Salesforce has been one of the poster children of the so-called "SaaSpocalypse," with CRM shares down around 35% from their 52-week high. "SaaSpocalypse" is a shorthand some market observers use to describe broad declines across many Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) stocks, partly tied to investor concerns that new artificial intelligence (AI) tools could reshape software economics.
As AI makes computer coding easier, there are considerable concerns about the future growth of legacy SaaS companies. That concern stems from the idea that would-be customers could simply use AI to code an application that replicates Salesforce’s functionality. In addition, emerging AI-native vendors could build similar tools at a lower cost, which would undercut Salesforce's pricing.
Salesforce, however, sees AI as an enabler for its business, not a hindrance. Notably, its AI add-on AgentForce recently hit $800 million in annual recurring revenue, a 169% year-over-year (YOY) increase.
Overall, Salesforce management remains confident in its outlook and is putting its money where its mouth is. The firm recently announced its largest-ever $25 billion accelerated share repurchase (ASR), which accounts for roughly 14% of the firm’s approximately $180 billion market capitalization.
ASRs are a particularly strong sign of confidence, representing the fastest way that a firm can repurchase its stock. This suggests that Salesforce sees its share price as significantly undervalued—a sentiment shared by Wall Street.
Analysts see nearly 44% potential upside in CRM over the next 12 months and have given the stock a consensus Moderate Buy rating, with 27 of the 39 analysts covering the stock assigning it a Buy.
DocuSign Lifts Repurchase Authorization to $2.6 Billion
DocuSign has faced many of the same broad AI-related questions that have pressured other software names.
Overall, the stock is down nearly 50% from its 52-week high, including a loss of around 30% in 2026. Shares of DOCU now trade at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of approximately 11x, narrowly above its all-time lowest P/E multiple.
Like many software stocks, negative impacts from AI disruption haven’t shown up in the company's financials yet. DocuSign generated tepid sales growth of 8% in 2025, relatively in line with the growth seen over the prior two years, and expects the same number again this year alongside relative margin stability.
However, the stock market is a forward-looking mechanism, and the questions it is weighing are whether results could start to deteriorate in the future, and whether DocuSign’s guidance will hold up.
But like Salesforce, DocuSign is signaling confidence through buybacks. Alongside its latest earnings release—which marked its 13th consecutive quarterly earnings beat dating back to Q3 2023—the company increased its buyback authorization by $2 billion. That move brings DocuSign's total authorization to $2.6 billion, or equal to a massive 28% of DocuSign’s approximately $9.5 billion market capitalization.
Notably, the firm spent around $269 million on buybacks in its latest quarter, an increase of 66% YOY. The firm’s new authorization suggests the pace of buybacks could continue accelerating, suggesting that management is bullish. So are analysts, who are calling for more than 41% potential upside over the next 12 months.
Qualcomm Boosts Buybacks as Memory Woes Weigh on Shares
Shares of semiconductor giant Qualcomm are trading approximately 35% below their 52-week high.
Generally speaking, Qualcomm has little exposure to the AI data center megatrend. This has led to vast underperformance compared to many large and mega-cap chip stocks over the past several years.
Somewhat ironically, Qualcomm’s biggest market is being negatively impacted by the AI buildout.
In its latest quarter, handsets—essentially smartphones—accounted for around 64% of the company’s revenue. In its next quarter, the company expects handset sales of around $6 billion, a decrease of 13% YOY. Smartphone makers are cutting back their orders of Qualcomm’s processor chips due to one key supply shortage: memory chips.
Specifically, these customers cannot secure enough dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), limiting their ability to assemble complete phones. This comes as memory chip makers are repurposing their DRAM capacity to increase high bandwidth memory (HBM) capacity, which is the type of memory needed in advanced AI systems, providing larger and higher margin opportunities for memory makers. This leaves Qualcomm as the odd man out.
Still, Qualcomm is confident in its long-term outlook, having significant traction in automotive markets and seeing a large robotics opportunity ahead. The company demonstrated this by announcing a $20 billion buyback authorization, bringing its total share repurchase authorization to $22.1 billion, equal to an enormous 17% of its approximately $137 billion market capitalization.
The buyback announcement comes at an opportune time, with analysts forecasting more than 29% potential upside over the next 12 months.
When Shares Slide, Buybacks Speak
Across Salesforce, DocuSign, and Qualcomm, the common thread is scale: each company is allocating substantial capacity to share repurchases after significant drawdowns from recent highs. Buybacks don’t erase the risks driving these selloffs, but they do put real money behind management’s view that valuations have become more attractive.
Within this group of stocks, Salesforce’s accelerated share repurchase is the most powerful statement, reflecting urgency as well as conviction. The bigger test, though, won’t be the size of the authorization; it will be whether execution and results over the coming quarters persuade the market that the AI-related fears hanging over legacy software are overstated.
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The article "These 3 Beaten-Down Stocks Just Announced Massive Share Buybacks" first appeared on MarketBeat.
