Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

Our common stock is traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market tier of the Nasdaq Stock Market, or Nasdaq, under the symbol HSIC.

On February 7, 2022, there were approximately 90,000 holders of record of our common stock and the last reported sales price was $76.28. A substantially greater number of holders of our common stock are “street name” or beneficial holders, whose shares are held by banks, brokers and other financial institutions.

Purchases of Equity Securities by the Issuer

Our share repurchase program, announced on March 3, 2003, originally allowed us to repurchase up to two million shares pre-stock splits (eight million shares post-stock splits) of our common stock, which represented approximately 2.3% of the shares outstanding at the commencement of the program. Subsequent additional increases totaling $4.1 billion, authorized by our Board of Directors, to the repurchase program provide for a total of $4.2 billion (including $400 million authorized on May 13, 2021) of shares of our common stock to be repurchased under this program.

On March 8, 2021, we announced the reinstatement of our share repurchase program, which was previously suspended in April 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As of December 25, 2021, we had repurchased approximately $4.0 billion of common stock (81,068,993 shares) under these initiatives, with $200.0 million available for future common stock share repurchases.

The following table summarizes repurchases of our common stock under our stock repurchase program during the fiscal quarter ended December 25, 2021:

Dividend Policy

We have not declared any cash or stock dividends on our common stock during fiscal years 2021 or 2020. We currently do not anticipate declaring any cash or stock dividends on our common stock in the foreseeable future. We intend to retain earnings to finance the expansion of our business and for general corporate purposes, including our share repurchase program. Any declaration of dividends will be at the discretion of our Board of Directors and will depend upon the earnings, financial condition, capital requirements, level of indebtedness, contractual restrictions with respect to payment of dividends and other factors.

Stock Performance Graph

The graph below compares the cumulative total stockholder return on $100 invested, assuming the reinvestment of all dividends, on December 31, 2016, the last trading day before the beginning of our 2017 fiscal year, through the end of our 2021 fiscal year with the cumulative total return on $100 invested for the same period in the Dow Jones U.S. Health Care Index and the Nasdaq Stock Market Composite Index.

COMPARISON OF 5-YEAR CUMULATIVE TOTAL RETURN