Airsupport

you obviously didn't read the articles i posted, and you obviously know very little about how the stock market operates. it is that simple. please read the following and think about it before you call the 2 of us crazy.. you trying to challenge us is whats crazy.. please educate yourself before you actually get anyone to believe the crap you are spreading. so read the following and quit making a fool of yourself... especially on the internet!!!


PS SORRY TO THE REST OF YOU FOR THE LONG ARTICLE, HE OBVIOUSLY WOULDN'T CLICK A LINK IF I PUT IT HERE SO I MADE IT EASIER FOR HIM TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW.

Revenue totaled $875.6 million, up 10.6 percent from $791.8 million last year. The increase was mostly because available seat miles - a measure of an airline's passenger-carrying capacity - surged 14.7 percent. SkyWest increased its fleet size to 437 aircraft from 407 a year ago.
In a related matter, SkyWest also said it intends to buy back another 5 million shares.
In response, investors pushed up the value of SkyWest's stock by 4.9 percent on a day when most stocks were under heavy selling pressure. SkyWest closed at $26.94 a share, up $1.26, in heavy trading on Nasdaq.
SkyWest's quarter was also helped by a 7.8 percent decline in fuel costs. Fuel and labor are an airline's biggest expenses.

If a company’s stock is suffering from low financial ratios, buying back stock can give some of the ratios a temporary boost.
Key ratios like earnings per share (EPS) and price earnings ratio (PE) look better because they are based on the number of outstanding shares. Reduce the number of shares and even though earnings don’t change, the EPS looks better.

Improving Financial Ratios
Another reason a company might pursue a buyback is solely to improve its financial ratios – metrics upon which the market seems to be heavily focused. This motivation is questionable. If reducing the number of shares is not done in an attempt to create more value for shareholders but rather make financial ratios look better, there is likely to be a problem with the management. However, if a company’s motive for initiating a buyback program is sound, the improvement of its financial ratios in the process may just be a byproduct of a good corporate decision. Let’s look at how this happens.

First of all, share buybacks reduce the number of shares outstanding. Once a company purchases its shares, it often cancels them or keeps them as treasury shares, and reduces the number of shares outstanding in the process.

Moreover, buybacks reduce the assets on the balance sheet (remember cash is an asset). As a result, return on assets (ROA) actually increases because assets are reduced; return on equity (ROE) increases because there is less outstanding equity. In general, the market views higher ROA and ROE as positives. (See Reading The Balance Sheet.)

Suppose a company repurchases one million shares at $15 per share for a total cash outlay of $15 million. Below are the components of the ROA and earnings per share (EPS) calculations and how they change as a result of the buyback.


The Meaning of Buybacks
A stock buyback, also known as a "share repurchase", is a company's buying back its shares from the marketplace. You can think of a buyback as a company investing in itself, or using its cash to buy its own shares. The idea is simple: because a company can’t act as its own shareholder, repurchased shares are absorbed by the company, and the number of outstanding shares on the market is reduced. When this happens, the relative ownership stake of each investor increases because there are fewer shares, or claims, on the earnings of the company.
Typically, buybacks are carried out in one of two ways:
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</B>Now let’s look at why a company would initiate such a plan.

The Motives
If you ask its management, they’ll likely tell you that a buyback is the best use of capital at a particular time. After all, the goal of a firm's management is to maximize return for shareholders, and a buyback generally increases shareholder value. The prototypical line in a buyback press release is "we don't see any better investment than in ourselves". Although this can sometimes be the case, this statement is not always true.

Nevertheless, there are still sound motives that drive companies to repurchase shares. For example, management many feel the market has discounted its share price too steeply. A stock price can be pummeled by the market for many reasons like weaker-then-expected earnings results, an accounting scandal or just a poor overall economic climate. Thus, when a company spends millions of dollars buying up its own shares, it says management believes that the market has gone too far in discounting the shares - a positive sign.

Improving Financial Ratios
Another reason a company might pursue a buyback is solely to improve its financial ratios – metrics upon which the market seems to be heavily focused. This motivation is questionable. If reducing the number of shares is not done in an attempt to create more value for shareholders but rather make financial ratios look better, there is likely to be a problem with the management. However, if a company’s motive for initiating a buyback program is sound, the improvement of its financial ratios in the process may just be a byproduct of a good corporate decision. Let’s look at how this happens.

First of all, share buybacks reduce the number of shares outstanding. Once a company purchases its shares, it often cancels them or keeps them as treasury shares, and reduces the number of shares outstanding in the process.

Moreover, buybacks reduce the assets on the balance sheet (remember cash is an asset). As a result, return on assets (ROA) actually increases because assets are reduced; return on equity (ROE) increases because there is less outstanding equity. In general, the market views higher ROA and ROE as positives. (See Reading The Balance Sheet.)

Suppose a company repurchases one million shares at $15 per share for a total cash outlay of $15 million. Below are the components of the ROA and earnings per share (EPS) calculations and how they change as a result of the buyback.

The buyback also helps to improve the company’s price-earnings ratio (P/E). The P/E ratio is one of the most well-known and often-used measures of value. At the risk of oversimplification, when it comes to the P/E ratio, the market often thinks lower is better. Therefore, if we assume that the shares remain at $15, the P/E ratio before the buyback is 75 ($15/$0.2); after the buyback, the P/E decreases to 68 ($15/$0.22) due to the reduction in outstanding shares. In other words, fewer shares + same earnings = higher EPS!

Based on the P/E ratio as a measure of value, the company is now less expensive than it was prior to the repurchase despite the fact there was no change in earnings.

Dilution Another reason that a company may move forward with a buyback is to reduce the dilution that is often caused by generous employee stock option plans (ESOP). (See Option Compensation - Part 1, Part 2 and The “True” Cost Of Stock Options.)

Bull markets and strong economies often create a very competitive labor market - companies have to compete to retain personnel and ESOPs comprise many compensation packages. Stock options have the opposite effect of share repurchases, as they increase the number of shares outstanding when the options are exercised. As was seen in the above example, a change in the number of outstanding shares can affect key financial measures such as EPS and P/E. In the case of dilution, it has the opposite effect of repurchase: it weakens the financial appearance of the company.

Tax Benefit
In many ways, a buyback is similar to a dividend because the company is distributing money to shareholders. Traditionally, a major advantage that buybacks had over dividends was that they were taxed at the lower capital-gains tax rate, whereas dividends are taxed at ordinary income tax rates. However, with the passing of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, the tax rate on dividends is now equivalent to the rate on capital gains.

Conclusion
Are share buybacks good or bad? As is so often the case in finance, the question may not have a definitive answer. If a stock is undervalued and a buyback truly represents the best possible investment for a company, the buyback - and its effects - can be viewed as a positive sign for shareholders. Watch out, however, if a company is merely using buybacks to prop up ratios, provide short-term relief to an ailing stock price or to get out from under excessive dilution.

SkyWestPilot1

That's the first thought that entered my mind as well.

bla bla bla

If that is true, it looks like I will be flying for swa sooner than I thought, and for a lot less.....

SkyWestPilot1

I know, I'm afraid this is the future of domestic flying, like it or not.

Blkflyer

Let me say that Delta did not want to Sell OFF ASA but had to do it to raise cash for the new credit card processing agreement they were pursuing., and the only way to do that was to sell at the Low price and sweeten the deal to skywest.. I may be a Dumb Pilot but I do know that they paid a hell of alot more money for ASA when they bought it..Lets just say Skywest was at the right place at the right time ie they they got lucky and hit the jackpot. if the market and the economy was diffrenent at the time I doubt Skywest would Own ASA... Now with that said when its all said and done A regional is a regional is a regional...

Fly safe yall

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Your not understanding your day trading book. Please oh wise stock maven, explain how "market makers" determine their BID and Ask prices for all of us unlearned who only use level one quotes.... And FYI i don’t think he was implying that skyw's stock price fluctuated "SOLELY" on the news of stock buybacks...... But that IS one of many factor’s in determining the stock price.

dontsurf

now you're just wasting time. you can't read, apparently. nowhere in those "beginners" articles did it say "a company buys back stock because it always makes the price go up" or "stock price always goes up when a company buys back its stock". re-read what i said. you obviously didn't read what i said, nor do you know anything about me. anyone that has to look up stuff on "beginner" websites certainly doesn't have experience doing what i used to do for a living. you don't even know what a series 55 is, do you? oh, well, i guess you can look that up on a "beginner" website too.

anyway, my point was and is that there's a couple of guys here who look at skywest inc. buying back stock as such an evil thing, and that's not true. that the only reason they do it is to make themselves richer. that it's guaranteed that anytime a company buys back stock the stock price goes up. none of those things are ALWAYS true. does the stock price sometimes go up if a company buys back stock? yes, it does. but it's not BECAUSE they are buying the stock back. it's not simple causation. if you've ever made a market in an OTC stock, then come talk to me. otherwise, quit being so simplistic. and i'd suggest actually reading the articles you post. i read them, and they are right in all aspects, though not complete, and they clearly point out what management HOPES to accomplish by a stock buyback. what you have to remember is that the stock market runs on expectations...expectations of the investors, of analysts, etc. NOT on expectations or hopes of management of any company. again, if that's all it took to make a stock go up, we'd see stock buybacks every single day. i'm tired of this. i was just trying to educate a couple of people on here that have wildly simplistic views on how the investment markets and corporate finance work. i know you don't know anything about it, and that's fine. no one is born knowing this stuff. but learn a little before you go saying things that make it obvious you've never done this for a living.

dontsurf

thanks for making my point for me. i love it.

texaspilot76

Holy smoke!!!! Skywest votes down APLA and their stock increases. I am headed out to buy US Airways stock! I will get rich!

Airsupport

The reason I was being simplistic is because you didn't seem to understand that buying back stock can, and usually does in a stable company poised for growth, cause the price to increase. Yes those are beginner websites, once again because after reading your post I was under the impression you knew nothing about stock repurchase programs and therefore needed some reading material to help you understand.

Now I will address your comments. First you are right, some people on this site feel that a stock repurchase is "evil". I however do not agree with that, and apparently you don't either. And I never said that stock repurchase always makes a stock price go up. If a company is sinking and it buys back its stock, it is still worthless (a sinking company would almost never buy its own stock back, they would prefer to send people packing with nothing). I don't feel skywest is a sinking ship, and neither do the investors, (more planes coming on board, better revenue, and good performance bode well for skywest right now) and by them buying stock back they have increased their market value, and in turn have made their own personal stock more valuable.

You don't have to do this for a living to be good at it. I do quite well, and my portfolio would be proof of that. Sorry if you got all huffed up because 2 people on this message board said that buying stock back causes the price to go up, which actually is spot on with the company we were both referring to. Can you argue that we were wrong by saying that when skywest bought their stock back the price didn't go up?? Glad we could have a decent discussion.