The problem with the stated buyback using preferred shares is that you can't buy a common share on the open market using a preferred share. So the float cannot change.
The only way you can possibly "buy" common shares with preferred shares is to trade them one-for-one. The only ones who can trade them one-for-one right now is those holding the 500M shares that aren't in the float.
And there is clearly a problem with claiming that one of the reasons they increased the AS was so that they could use preferred shares for the buyout. They could have done that any time at all, since the overall share count will not change.
That said, by converting common shares to preferred shares, they do affect the eps number positively. The OS used when calculating eps is the common shares only. Preferred shares are not used in the caluculation.
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