Microsoft To Buy Back $40bn of Its Shares

[cwbys21]

heruamon said:

cwbys21 said:
The BBC article states that it will be drawn out until 2013, so it isn't as big of news as it is over 5 years, or 5bn per year. But with stocks dropping 30% according to the article, the board members won't be happy because their value dropped 30% as they are the biggest share holders. Doing this will inflate stock value because it creates demand and there will be less shares going around so everybody is now worth more money.

Dude, I don't personally know you, and I'm not saying you're ignorant, but the comment above is very ignorant, in the truest sense of the word.  A $40 bln stock buyback over 5 years is massive, by any measure.  Consider the market cap for Sony and Nintendo, and look at M$ commitment to reassure large sharholders that the company is in it to deliver.  In 2013, people holding M$ will be very happy...

 

It is a big buy back to be sure, but it isn't like they are going out right now and buying every free stock and when 40 billion dollars are spent they stop.  The BBC article reports that HP autorized an 8 billion dollar buy back and have already spent 5 billion of it.  So for companies with as much money as they have seems really big to us, but not really to them.  So is it that big a deal if HP has also spent 5 billion dollars when they don't rake in the same kind of money that Microsoft does?