Share buybacks coming at the expense of dividends Intel's dividend increase also pleased investors. But it's worth noting that the company could have increased its dividend by much more, if it didn't spend so much shareholder capital on buying back shares. On the whole, Intel returns a lot of cash to investors. But the majority of it is done through share repurchases. Intel paid $3.3 billion in dividends to shareholders in the first nine months of the year. That's a lot of money, but it's far less than the $7.1 billion spent on share buybacks in this period. Intel's buybacks soared from last year. In the first nine months in 2013, Intel spent just $1.8 billion on share buybacks.