Two Essays on Stock Repurchase

Download or read book Two Essays on Stock Repurchase written by Hongsong Neuhauser and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the U.S., stock repurchases, as a major cash distribution mechanism of public companies, have exhibited a rising trend that is insensitive to both the increase and decline of the stock market. In this dissertation, we study firms' actual repurchase activities for the period of 1983 to 2008 using both annual and quarterly financial information, combined with insiders fillings with SEC. Our findings suggest a much profound reason to better elucidate firms' actual stock repurchase activities. We find that executive options (but not employee) play a large and significant role in explaining the firm's actual repurchases. More important, we find a positive and significant relationship between timing of executives' option exercises and their firms' level of actual repurchases during the same period. Our results are robust and not driven by methodologies used in measuring stock repurchases, option grants, and option exercise factors, in variable definitions or classifications of firms, nor by sample time periods. Last but not least, we find that actual share repurchase activity (as opposed to repurchase announcements) is not consistent with other hypotheses for stock repurchases, including: (a) flexible substitution for dividends; (b) correction of undervaluation; and (c) disgorging of free cash flow. This evidence has important implications for the ongoing debate regarding the fairness of executive compensation. Finally, our evidence demonstrates the justification of further regulation on actual stock repurchases for the improving of the transparency and the efficiency of security markets.