There are a number of specific details that investors in 3M (MMM -0.95%) should know about its stock. The following slideshow covers a handful of them, walking readers through a broad but brief analysis of the company from a shareholder's perspective.

The slideshow shows, among other things, that 3M rewards investors in multiple ways:

  • It paid out 50% of its earnings via dividends over the last 12 months, corresponding to a 2.65% dividend yield.
  • It bought back $4.7 billion worth of its own stock over the past four quarters, translating into a 3.8% decrease in 3M's outstanding share count.
  • And even though its shares yield more than the S&P 500, 3M has still managed to outperform the large cap index over the past decade, outpacing it by 57 percentage points.

To learn more about 3M's stock, scroll through the following slideshow.


Slideshow data sourced from YCharts.com on December 12, 2015. Image credits: The Motley Fool, iStock/Thinkstock.