چرا شرکت ها از خریدمجدد بازار آزاد استفاده می کنند؟ دیدگاه مدیریتی

We survey 642 top financial executives to learn their views about their firm’s share repurchases from January 1998 to September 1999. Based on 194 responses from managers of firms engaging in open-market repurchases, the results show that the most highly cited reasons for repurchasing shares of common stock are consistent with the signaling hypothesis, specifically the undervaluation version of this hypothesis. When compared to the results of previous surveys, our findings suggest that the importance management attaches to certain reasons for repurchasing shares of common stock may have changed over the past few decades. Reasons such as repurchasing shares to provide shares for incentive plans and to remove large blocks of stocks appear less important while reasons such as repurchasing shares to adjust the firm’s capital structure and to avoid dividend taxation appear more important.

Although companies have been permitted to repurchase their stock for many years, U.S. corporations did not begin widely using share repurchases until the mid-1980s. Today, the repurchase of common shares is a common practice. For example, in the 5-year period between 1995 and 1999, U.S. corporations announced intentions to repurchase about US$ 750 billion worth of their stock and in 1998 distributed more cash to shareholders via repurchases than cash dividends (Grullon & Ikenberry, 2000). The increasing level of repurchase activity contrasts sharply with the decreasing proportion of firms paying dividends.3 According to Bierman (2001), the reasons that U.S. corporations have increasingly repurchased significant amounts of their own common shares have been subject to numerous, and often conflicting interpretations. Although no fully satisfactory explanation exists for changes in repurchase activity over the past several decades, especially the dramatic increase in the use of open-market share repurchases during the 1990s, several factors may have contributed to this development.

In this study, we surveyed top financial managers of firms that announced the repurchase of shares of common stock between January 1998 and September 1999 to obtain their views about various practices and issues involving repurchases. Based on 194 responses from managers of firms engaging in open-market repurchases, our results show that the two most highly cited reasons for repurchasing shares of common stock are to add value to shareholders and acquire stock at a bargain price. This latter reason supports the undervaluation version of the signaling explanation for stock repurchases. Other highly rated reasons cited by managers included the “best use of excess cash,” “increase the stock price,” and “increase earnings per share.”