Accelerated Share Repurchase - ASR

  

So you get the share repurchase thing, right? Companies think that Wall Street is nuts to be selling their shares at some stupid low price...call it 12 bucks a share. So the company buys back its own stock. But let's say it thinks that, in a few quarters, its new product will be blammo, and its stock will be rocking again. And even though it disclosed everything to everyone, the stock, still at 12 bucks a share, is a screaming bargain buy.

So the company wants to accelerate things. And in an ASR, what happens is that the company basically advances their broker/bankers a big chunk of cash, from which the bank draws to buy back shares in bulk, with the goal of doing so...quickly. Before word of the new flying car actually working and not killing people (like it did before) gets out.

The bank then goes out into the market and just aggressively buys shares, usually at a modest premium...but then, if it turns out that the shares later sag and the bank is able to unwind some of its derivative positions, essentially making the shares cheaper to have been acquired, it then rebates, or gives to the company additional shares in the buyback. The key idea here: the size of the pie shrinks, and the volume of pie given to each shareholder for the same percentage ownership-sized slice...increases.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What Are Shares Outstanding?268 Views

00:00

Finance a la shmoop what are shares outstanding Okay first

00:07

things first this is not a qualitative assessment of shares

00:11

shares maybe bad awful mediocre good or even outstanding but

00:15

that's not what this term refers to it also doesn't

00:17

mean that they're you know out standing in the ring

00:21

paying dividends in the way that they don't do that

00:25

Sorry won't sing again Alright rather shares outstanding is a

00:29

technical term that reflects how many pieces make up the

00:32

sum total of the ownership pie of a company So

00:38

here is what baby's first chainsaw dot com looks like

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it has forty million slices and is currently trading for

00:44

fifteen bucks a slice while new toddlers were so into

00:47

mechanical power tools or how sick and twisted the writers

00:51

it's from up Are you been here anyway If you

00:54

didn't catch the cleverness here a slice equals a share

00:57

so the company has forty million shares outstanding They're trading

01:01

at fifteen bucks age and that gives the company a

01:04

market value of six hundred million dollars That means that

01:08

if someone wanted to buy the entire pie they could

01:09

in theory pay six hundred million bucks assuming everyone would

01:13

Sell them all their shares for fifteen bucks each and

01:16

the shares outstanding Change Sure Bunch of factors change that

01:20

number all the time When an employee decides to either

01:23

buy out or sell the stock options granted to her

01:26

when she joined the company Well those options convert into

01:29

shares So if she had ten thousand options and sold

01:33

them the company would have then ten thousand fewer options

01:37

outstanding We're kind of like a liability but it would

01:40

now have forty million ten thousand shares outstanding The options

01:45

just converted into shares on men Okay what if the

01:48

company wanted to raise thirty million bucks to buy a

01:51

small competitors for all cash Well it could sell to

01:54

the public two million shares at fifteen bucks a pop

01:57

Did it already own those shares Well likely not They

01:59

weren't just sitting in the vault in treasury stock so

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it had to print those shares out of thin air

02:04

to dot and then sell them to new buyers So

02:07

add two million to the total and now the company

02:09

has forty two million ten thousand shares outstanding It also

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has thirty million bucks more in cash on its balance

02:16

Sheet by the way now there's a danger in the

02:19

increase in shares outstanding It's called share creep and it's

02:23

not this guy Rather it refers to the gradual increase

02:26

in shares outstanding otherwise known as dilution because now instead

02:30

of a six hundred million dollar valuation with forty million

02:33

shares at fifteen bucks the company if it were to

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still have a six hundred million dollar valuation now it's

02:39

more shares outstanding would see its stock price drop teo

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six hundred million divided by forty two million ten thousand

02:45

and yeah that gets you fourteen dollars in twenty eight

02:47

cents a share So in the process of the options

02:50

being converted and the cash being raised by selling equity

02:54

the company destroyed seventy two cents a share in value

02:58

Now in real life the market probably goes up and

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makes account for all that What were omitting here is

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that the company raised thirty million bucks of cash in

03:07

the process Cash that well we investors presume it will

03:10

use wisely and not on you know kibble for the 00:03:14.07 --> [endTime] office terrier

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