Stock buybacks, whether you like them or loathe them, are a reality and when companies are sitting on so much cash (like they are now - almost $1 trillion!), buybacks are certainly one option for companies looking to deploy their cash hordes.
Barron's recently reviewed a few online resources to help investors stay on top of macro and company-specific trends. You should read the whole article (sub. required).
Here are a couple of their ideas and some of my own thrown in to boot...
Stock buyback resources
- S&P Indices Market Attributes Series -- I'm not exactly sure of what that means but this page posts proprietary S&P reports into buybacks. Good overview on their reports (like this one (.pdf))
- The Online Investor: OLI does a good job of reporting all the buybacks in the market on a per-company basis.
- StreetInsider: Ongoing free feed of stock repurchases at numerous U.S. traded companies.
- Seeking Alpha transcript search: Seeking Alpha publishes thousands of free conference call transcripts. Search for terms like "stock buybacks" or "share repurchases" and get a list of which companies are talking about them and what they're saying.
Academic studies of share buybacks
- The Evolving Relation between Earnings, Dividends, and Stock Repurchases: Interesting look into how earnings are paid out in both dividends and repurchases. Posits that stock repurchases have taken over dividends as way to pay out investors in a more conservative environment.
- Stock Repurchases as an Earnings Management Device: This study finds evidence that a disproportionately large number of firms have EPS increasing repurchases when they would have marginally missed analyst forecasts without the repurchase, and a disproportionately small number of firms have EPS decreasing repurchases when they are close to analyst forecasts before the repurchase.
- The Timing of Stock Repurchases: Contrary to mainstream thinking that repurchases are essentially timed by management to reveal insiders' views on valuation, this study sees timing of stock buybacks as related to business cycles.
- Stock market anomalies: What can we learn from repurchases and insider trading?: This paper finds a connection between insider information (expectations about future performance) and timing of stock repurchases.
Premium Newsletters using Share Repurchase Strategies
Funds using buyback strategies
- PowerShares Buyback Achievers Portfolio ETF (PKW)