Calcbench’s Stock Repurchases Report
Countries with XBRL mandates that cover all of their listed companies have an astonishingly rich source of data about their markets, in terms of individual companies and long term trends. This is invaluable information for investors, analysts, regulators and policy makers, not to mention the academic community. Making the news this week is a research paper from Calcbench on the share repurchase programs of US companies. Calcbench’s data is sourced from the SEC’s XBRL EDGAR data base.
An eye watering 2.5 trillion US dollars have been spent by companies on buying back their own stock since 2012. Share buybacks lower the cost of capital that companies incur, return cash to investors and enhance key earnings ratios such as P/E and EPS. What else do they signal? Lack of new opportunities for growth? Management that prefers financial engineering to innovation? Companies heading away from public markets? Make your own minds up — have a read of the article from XBRL US member Calcbench, as well as their in depth research report.
