Alphabet is buying back more than $5B in stock next quarter

Today, Alphabet, the umbrella company which owns Google, Nest, and all of Google’s money-eating “moonshot” experiments, announced plans to buy back more than $5 billion — specifically, $5,099,019,513.59 — in stock. That’s roughly one percent of Google’s $451.3 billion market cap.

In typical Google fashion, that goofy-looking figure translates to a particular number: the “square root of 26 e18th,” as Forbes’ George Anders first noted. There are 26 letters in the latin alphabet, obvi.

This isn’t all that surprising. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat hinted last quarter that the company wasn’t opposed to returning some of its cash to shareholders. Now it’s actually happening.

This announcement is one of many factors driving Alphabet’s stock price up as high as 12 percent during after-hours trading today, in addition to the company’s stronger-than-expected earnings results.

For more on Google’s first quarter under Alphabet, technically the company’s third fiscal quarter, head here.