they had over $10MM in the bank when they paid the dividend which only cost $2.8MM approx. Then they set aside $1MM for share buy back. Even after everything they still must have more then $5MM in the bank so i don't think its a matter of having the funds or not.
I believe they are not allowed to announce when they are starting the buy back so there are no market manipulations while they are buying. That being said when i talked to Eadie, he said they haven't started yet. I know he can't say they are buying but would assume he also can't lie and say he hasn't started if he has; so i'm not sure where we stand on that. i read somewhere that they could only buy a set amount of shares per day when they start...
as for the share price - short term its painful. i've already taken a big bath on this thing with an average price in the 30s. I think in part the reason we are seeing some lows here is tax loss selling. folks like myself that could take a sizeable tax loss on this may decide to dump some shares which certainly doesn't help SAM maintain or increase our SP.
if i dumped all of the shares i own in sam, even if sam was buying them back it would take them a week at their maximum allowable purchase per day to buy just my shares. that doesn't include anybody else who may be dumping.
for the record though. i haven't sold any shares and in fact even while underwater I rolled my dividend into more SAM.i still think long term it will be a winner. we'll see!
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