[overrun11]

Buybacks are still better if you want to hold forever and don't care about share price. With a dividend distribution you must pay taxes and reinvest the diminished proceeds. You end up with a smaller share of the company than in the buyback scenario. Example:

A: Hold $10 of stock. Buyback of 1$ per share. You're left with $10 of stock. B: Hold $10 of stock. Dividend of 1$ per share. You're left with 9$ of stock and $1 cash - taxes payed. Once reinvested you have $9 + (1 * tax rate) in stock.

You're making two mistakes: One is thinking that dividends are magic money that do not cause share prices to fall in exact accordance with the distribution and the other is that buybacks lift the share price somehow (they do not, see Modigliani-Miller).