One could argue both ways as to whether buybacks make company performance look better.
My personal approach is that it makes the company look worse to those who look under the hood (which would most likely be long-term individual investors who know what they are doing, and both investment and retirement funds because it is assumed they know what they are doing).
Is EPS higher because the company is earning more for the same number of shares (meaning management is very good at growing the company) or is EPS higher because total earnings were unchanged (management doesn't know how to grow the company) while shares were retired due to buybacks?
Managers who can only grow a company through the use of bookkeeping tricks should be fired and their retirement packages should be truncated.
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