phrantic, you gotta spend money to make money. Stock is a company's form of currency and it can be used to pay for certain products, services, collateral against loans etc.
Perhaps at the time they increased the AS they needed stock to pay for services, product ..whatever. Then, once they saw cash flow from their efforts, they purchased the stock back to minimize the dilution? Mind you, this is just speculation and you are certainly free to speculate differently.
Now, let me pose a question to you. If this were simply a printing press, dilution scam, why would they even bother to buy back any stock? Why not just keep raising the AS and printing paper?
