Lincoln National Restarts Buybacks After a Nearly Four-Year Pause

Lincoln National Corporation LNC is bringing share buybacks back in the third quarter of 2026, marking an important turn in its multi-year effort to repair capital and reduce balance-sheet risk. The company paused repurchases in the fourth quarter of 2022 to preserve capital as pressure from its legacy insurance businesses weighed on its financial position.

Initially, Lincoln expected the pause to last through 2023. Instead, it stretched much longer. The company repurchased no common shares in 2023, 2024 or 2025, and stayed on the sidelines in the first half of 2026. Still, its November 2021 authorization remained in place. Of the original $1.5 billion program, about $714 million remains available.

Lincoln spent the intervening years rebuilding its capital position. It raised preferred equity, sold its wealth-management business, secured an investment from Bain Capital and reduced the capital intensity of new business. These actions, along with broader de-risking efforts, helped restore its risk-based capital ratio.

Addressing preferred stock was another key capital-allocation priority before management could turn its attention back to common stock repurchases. Together, these moves signal a return to more balanced allocation.

At the end of the second quarter, cash and invested cash stood at about $10.2 billion, up from $9.5 billion at 2025-end compared with $6.5 billion of long-term debt and $400 million of short-term debt. Lincoln is also maintaining its quarterly common dividend at 45 cents per share, payable Nov. 2 to shareholders of record as of Oct. 12. Its current dividend yield of 3.94% tops the industry average of 2.77%.

LNC’s Price Performance

Lincoln National shares have gained 1.1% in the year-to-date period compared with a 20.6% rise in the industry it belongs to.

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Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Lincoln National currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Finance space are Accelerant Holdings ARX, Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company WTW and CNO Financial Group, Inc. CNO, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Accelerant’s current-year earnings is pegged at 73 cents per share, which remained stable over the past 60 days. The consensus estimate for its full-year revenues is pegged at $1.09 billion, signaling 18.9% year-over-year growth. Accelerant beat earnings estimates in each of the past four quarters, with an average surprise of 32.6%.

The consensus mark for Willis Towers Watson’s current-year earnings indicates a 15.5% year-over-year increase. It beat earnings estimates in each of the past four quarters, with an average surprise of 3.9%. Furthermore, the consensus estimate for WTW’s full-year revenues is pegged at $10.51 billion, an 8.2% increase from a year ago.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CNO Financial’s current-year earnings is pegged at $4.74 per share, which witnessed two upward estimate revisions in the past month against no movement in the opposite direction. It beat earnings estimates in all the past four quarters, with an average surprise of 23.2%. The consensus mark for CNO Financial’s 2026 revenues is pegged at $4.02 billion.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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