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1140 Points
Joined July 2010
Well the motive behind buy-back of shares is not always the same, there are various reasons:
1. It is a way of returning cash/capital to shareholders. You can consider it as a form of special dividends. The reasons companies do it is to not change a stable or gradually increasing dividend policy and still pay back any excess capital.
This form is very popular in west among the businesses with cyclical nature...things like re-insurance and insurance.
2. Another reason is reduction of float, at times used in conjunction with other M&A defence mechanism
3. Another reason is supporting the share price. Post the buyback of shares the value of remaining shares' generally' goes up.
4. Needless to say it is EPS accretive.
5. Also buy-backs are used for play around the tax laws, assume capital gains are not taxable and dividend distributions are (this is different for each jurisdiction). Taxable, then instead of paying excess cash dividends; Companies prefer to buy back shares
Hope this helps