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

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Market Information

Verisk trades under the ticker symbol “VRSK” on the NASDAQ Global Select Market. As of February 18, 2022, there were approximately 66 stockholders of record. We believe the number of beneficial owners is substantially greater than the number of record holders because a large portion of common stock is held in “street name” by brokers.

On February 17, 2021, April 28, 2021, July 28, 2021, and October 27, 2021, our Board approved a cash dividend of $0.29 per share of common stock issued and outstanding to the holders of record as of March 15, 2021, June 15, 2021, September 15, 2021, and December 15, 2021, respectively. Cash dividends of $188.2 million and $175.8 million were paid during the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020 and recorded as a reduction to retained earnings, respectively. We have a publicly announced share repurchase plan and repurchased a total of 64,753,581 shares since our IPO through December 31, 2021. As of December 31, 2021, we had 382,351,399 shares of treasury stock.

Performance Graph

The graph below compares the cumulative total stockholder return on $100 invested in our common stock, with the cumulative total return on $100 invested in the S&P 500 index and an aggregate of peer issuers in our industry. The peer issuers used for this graph are Black Knight, Inc., CoreLogic Inc. (as of June 3, 2021, CoreLogic was no longer a publicly-traded company), CoStar Group Inc., Equifax Inc., Fair Isaac Corp., Gartner, Inc., Global Payments, Inc., IHS Markit, Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., Jack Henry & Associates Inc., Moody’s Corporation, MSCI Inc., S&P Global, and TransUnion. The graph assumes that the value of investment in our common stock and each index was $100 at December 31, 2016 and that all cash dividends were reinvested. 

COMPARISON OF CUMULATIVE TOTAL RETURN

Assumes $100 Invested on December 31, 2016

Assumes Dividend Reinvested

Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2021

Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

We had no unregistered sales of equity securities during 2021.

Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

Our Board of Directors has authorized a share repurchase program ("Repurchase Program"), of up to $4.6 billion, inclusive of the $500.0 million authorization approved by the board on August 17, 2021. As of December 31, 2021, $603.8 million remains available for share repurchases. In December 2020, March 2021, June 2021, and September 2021, we entered into four Accelerated Share Repurchase ("ASR") agreements to repurchase shares of our common stock for an aggregate purchase price of $400.0 million. These ASRs were settled in February 2021, May 2021, September 2021, and December 2021. In December 2021, we entered into an additional ASR agreement to repurchase shares of our common stock for an aggregate purchase price of $100.0 million. This ASR was settled in February 2022. Please refer to Note 22. Subsequent Events, for more information. Under the Repurchase Program, we may repurchase stock in the market or as otherwise determined by us. These authorizations have no expiration dates and may be suspended or terminated at any time. Since the introduction of share repurchase as a feature of our capital management strategies in 2010, we have repurchased shares with an aggregated value of $3,996.2 million. On February 16, 2022, our Board of Directors approved an additional share repurchase authorization of $1.0 billion. Our share repurchases for the quarter ended December 31, 2021 are set forth below:

(1) In September 2021, we entered into an ASR agreement to repurchase shares of our common stock for an aggregate purchase price of $75.0 million with Wells Fargo Bank. The ASR agreement is accounted for as a treasury stock transaction and a forward stock purchase agreement indexed to our common stock. Upon the payment of the aggregate purchase price of $75.0 million on October 1, 2021, we received 299,596 shares of our common stock at a price of $200.27 per share. Upon final settlement in December 2021, we received an additional 52,815 shares as determined by the daily volume weighted average share price of our common stock during the term of the ASR agreement, bringing the total shares received under this ASR agreement to 352,411 and a final average price paid of $212.82 per share.