Stock price isn’t a great indicator of product quality though. Stock price requires endless growth which is unsustainable.
One can continuously grow a stock if they reduce the shares outstanding.
That being said iirc buy backs have notoriously all gone to executives. Essentially they buy back, and then award themselves options to re-dilute, but cannot readily find a source for that. So maybe incorrect.
The business might pay the executive with stock per the board approved compensation package, but a CEO does not wake up and say “I want to give myself 5M shares so let’s do a 5M share buyback”.
A buyback benefits all shareholders equally by reducing supply of the stock and therefore increasing its price.
correct. Hence my wording
> and then award themselves options to re-dilute
It's not that executives receive the bought back stock, but that their stock based compensation plans result in no net decrease in the amount of outstanding shares.