Ok, since you asked, I will. I actually wrote a really long post that went into great detail on this, but that post disappeared into the ether. So I'm not going to type it all out again. So I'll just answer your question very straightforwardly since you never studied finance and you've obviously been told something by somebody and it's just not true. No one in management gets rich from the company buying back outstanding stock. That doesn't even make any sense. How would they get rich from that? But that leaves the question why would they do it? There are 2 reasons companies will buy back outstanding shares. 1. To get a bump in the stock price because they either have something good coming up or they want to trick "the street" into thinking they do. Or 2. (this is the one that fits SKYW situation) they want to get their cash balances down so they do not appear as such a good buyout (takeover) target to other companies or private equity firms. Skyest Inc. management like running the company. They do not want someone else to buy it. With too much cash on the books, you look more and more like a good buyout target. By buying back some stock, you lower that cash and your balance sheets don't look as tempting as they did before.

I hope that everyone will now stop spouting out the "management is getting rich by buying back stock and they should be giving us that money" nonsense. Yes, I agree that they should be giving us that money (I work for Skywest and it is sad that there are no yearly pay increases), but they are not getting rich personally by having the company buy back the stock.