"What GE paid in dividends and spent on share repurchases bore no relation to its actual profits. That’s because it used much of the over-$200 billion in proceeds from asset sales to fund gigantic outlays for both. From 2009 to 2018, it spent roughly $130 billion on the dividends and buybacks combined, almost $80 billion more than its net profits over those ten years."
https://fortune.com/2019/08/27/ges-basic-businesses-underperforming-accounting-metric/amp/