[bern4444]

It's like a tax free dividend. Dividends are taxable but if a company uses the cash they would have spent on a dividend on a buy back there's no taxable event for the investors. Those investors who want the cash can sell and pay the tax and the rest enjoy the higher share price

[musicale]

Incentivizing short-term investors to dump stock by boosting the price temporarily? I guess that's a strategy.

[Kirby64]

In a purely rational market, buying back shares doesn't boost stock price temporarily... it boosts it forever. You buy back shares and 'retire' them, thereby making everyone else's shares more valuable.

Now, if you're using debt to finance share buy backs, then yeah... it's a short term ploy. But most companies don't use buy backs this way.