[prasadjoglekar]

Not quite. If a company is buying back shares, management believes stock is undervalued. The reverse is paying for real assets with stock.

Some of this is paying for barely useful assets using inflated stock, or with cash borrowed with inflated stock as collateral for the cash.

[jonway]

I mean management is going to think the stock is always undervalued.

Slightly offtopic: If a company does a stock buyback because they think its undervalued, what happens next? Does the stock go up and they're satisfied? Does the stock go up and then they sell it?

If they're selling it to realize profits, I say that it tantamount to pump-and-dump. If they sell it just to hike the price, why not distribute dividends with their excess cash reserves?

[sesky]

The purpose of a stock buyback is to increase the shares value. This allows investors to choose to realize profits, but this is not a "pump and dump" because having less outstanding shares fundamentally drives the price up. There is nothing wrong with stock buybacks.

The reason this is often done instead of a special dividend is that dividends create an immediate taxable event for all investors, which is considered less flexible than the capital gains tax associated with a stock buyback.

Besides the tax treatment difference, it's mostly a signalling/communication choice: share buybacks increase EPS which is a nice story, whereas dividends signal reliable profits.