Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
Stock Market Volatility (VIX) - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Investor Sentiment - 25th Mar 24
The Federal Reserve Didn't Do Anything But It Had Plenty to Say - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Breadth - 24th Mar 24
Stock Market Margin Debt Indicator - 24th Mar 24
It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - 24th Mar 24
Stocks: What to Make of All This Insider Selling- 24th Mar 24
Money Supply Continues To Fall, Economy Worsens – Investors Don’t Care - 24th Mar 24
Get an Edge in the Crypto Market with Order Flow - 24th Mar 24
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

The Ruinous Truth About Stock Buybacks

Companies / Investing 2012 Sep 21, 2012 - 05:39 AM GMT

By: Money_Morning

Companies

Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleMartin Hutchinson writes: Every time I hear a Wall Street analyst extolling the virtues of stock buybacks I just want to scream.

"Don't fall for the flim-flam," I think to myself, "demand the cash instead!"


That's why my Permanent Wealth Investor service focuses on the kinds of dividends you can actually hold in your hand. For me, cash is king.

Anything else is simply a magician's trick. It's a sleight of hand designed to make you think you're getting something when you really aren't.

Share repurchases or buybacks are the perfect example.

Behind the wondrous façade, stock buybacks are just a means for management to enrich themselves. The truth is buybacks are positively damaging to the interests of ordinary shareholders.

The Ruinous Truth Behind Apple's Stock Buyback
Take Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), for instance. It's the stock everybody loves these days.

This $653 billion company recently announced a $10 billion stock buyback over three years, beginning October 1. Naturally, shareholders cheered, believing the buyback would boost the share price.

But consider this: Apple is buying back shares at several times book value, so the buyback will actually dilute Apple's book value per share.

Based on the latest quarter, Apple's tangible book value was $106.3 billion, or $113 per share, while its stock closed today near $697 a share, or 6.2 times book value.

If Apple does a $10 billion buyback, it will reduce its book value by $10 billion to $96.3 billion while it reduces its share count by $10 billion/697 or 14.3 million shares, thus reducing its book value per share by 8.0% to $104.

Yes, its share price may trade at a greater premium to the reduced book value, but the chances are its premium will only increase modestly - in which case the $10 billion share buyback will REDUCE Apple's share price.

What's more, Apple is so generous to its top management and its share price is so high that its $10 billion share buyback will probably not be sufficient to satisfy management's stock options.

That means that at the end of the three years, Apple will have more shares outstanding than it had at the start.

Given that the buyback will almost certainly be carried out in private transactions between Apple and the large investment institutions, the benefit of the buyback to us ordinary shareholders thus escapes me.

Apple has also started paying a cash dividend, which is worth something; in this respect, good for them! But the buyback is a pure waste of shareholder money.

The other problem with the Apple buyback is that, being carried out at a price above $600, it is very expensive. For Apple, this may not matter much; the company's cash pile is so vast that it may be able to continue buybacks even during the next recession.

Then There's the Madness at AIG
A more egregious example comes from the insurance company American International Group (NYSE: AIG), which escaped bankruptcy in 2008 and is now buying back shares aggressively, having just announced a new $5 billion program.

However, it should be noted that AIG also bought back shares aggressively in 2004-2007, at prices that are now equivalent to $1,500 a share. To buy back shares at $1,500 that will soon be worth $35 is a transaction that only the financial services industry could deem attractive!

AIG was not alone in this madness, either.

All the major banks, including JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Citigroup (NYSE: C), spent much of the years 2004-08 buying back shares at high prices -- which they then had to re-issue to the market at a much lower price in 2009.

Today these same banks have already re-embarked on buyback programs without restoring their dividends to pre-2008 levels. That alone should tell you something.

In general, buyback programs are more attractive to management than dividends, because their stock options do not get the benefit of dividends, which lower the stock price by the amount of the dividend when they are paid.

Interestingly, this is not the case with Apple, where employee option holders will be given the benefit of dividends paid by Apple, as if they had owned the shares themselves - thus further diluting the value of nonemployee investors' holdings, of course.

Fortunately, most companies haven't got around to this additional shareholder rip-off yet.

To me the moral is clear. Dividends are paid in cash, to all shareholders, and thus represent a real value return on your investment.

On the other hand, stock buybacks give nothing to the individual shareholder, may reduce his share price if carried out at too high a price, and may endanger his dividend by reducing the company's cash reserves in the next recession.

That's the part Wall Street conveniently decides to leave out.

Source :http://moneymorning.com/2012/09/21/what-wall-street-will-never-tell-you-about-stock-buybacks/

Money Morning/The Money Map Report

©2012 Monument Street Publishing. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. Any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including on the world wide web), of content from this website, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Monument Street Publishing. 105 West Monument Street, Baltimore MD 21201, Email: customerservice@moneymorning.com

Disclaimer: Nothing published by Money Morning should be considered personalized investment advice. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized investent advice. We expressly forbid our writers from having a financial interest in any security recommended to our readers. All of our employees and agents must wait 24 hours after on-line publication, or after the mailing of printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended by Money Morning should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company.

Money Morning Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in