Garmin Ltd. (NYSE: GRMN) is critical to AI, as its capital return plan clearly shows. The company isn’t driving AI advances so much as advancing its technology with AI, providing cutting-edge service and utility to its users. The company is critical because its devices continuously generate massive amounts of high-quality data, spanning biometrics, GPS, mapping, and telemetry, and AI is all about data. Not only can these data sets be used to train models, but they can also be used for inference with existing models, entrenching the business in the AI ecosystem.
How do capital returns reflect the company’s position and AI strength? With their increases. The company proposed a 17% year-over-year (YOY) increase in distribution for fiscal year 2026 (FY2026) and authorized a new $500 million share repurchase program. The $500 million is worth more than 1% of the pre-release market cap, ensuring that dilution-offsetting buybacks will continue in 2026. The dividend yields about 1.6% as of mid-February, is reliably safe at less than 45% of the earnings consensus, and the distribution increase is accelerating.
