Re: both the cash flow statement and the balance sheet are consistent. They show that almost all of Intel's earnings were sucked up by the share repurchases, leaving no additional value in the company.
I'm not entirely familiar with the value of using liquid assets to reduce share volume, but I did start a thread on the topic on the Intel board:
It doesn't surprise me in the least that the AMD board figures stock buyback is an act of idiocy, because A) AMD doesn't have the spare cash to do it themselves and God forbid if Intel has an advantage that they don't, and B) it's easy to create FUD on the topic when few people truly understand the dynamics (me included). I suppose you and others may have good points after all, but then how in the world would Intel be able to get away with a $25B grant for further purchases, and rather than being punished by the experts on Wall Street, they actually send out a press release and get rewarded for it. So obviously, there is some real benefit to it that's far from the claims of it being a $2B money hole for profits every quarter (and as I've shown, there is a real reduction in share volume being accomplished by the buyback).
Your rhetoric sounds far too much like the ol' "Intel does it, so it must be wrong, and no further explanation is necessary" theme. Since I have yet to have the concept explained to me to the point where I fully understand it, I remain neutral, but I can still smell a lot of FUD coming from this thread.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
