A company only buys back shares when it has nothing better to do with its cash. If I was a shareholder of Microsoft I'd rather see the firm investing in exciting new projects... Buy backs are nice, but it shows that Microsoft doesn't have much in the pipeline...
Microsoft is extremely cash rich, it is just returning some money back to the shareholders and does not mean that it has nothing to do with its cash, just that it has far too much of it. They have been doing this for sometime now.
No, it means it doesn't have anything useful to do with all of this additional cash. If a really good opportunity came up you can bet Microsoft would rather pursue it than pay out money to shareholders. I'm just saying its not really a good thing (or a bad thing). People who know nothing about equity markets think that stock repurchases are like the greatest thing going, when, in reality, its basically the company saying they don't have enough projects to invest their excess cash in.
In assets wise, the net worth of such actions would be zero, but to the public it means that the management of Microsoft is confident in their own company to be doing that. So psychologically it would be good for Microsoft reputation on the stock market.
wow! great news. this is nice decision taken by microsoft. it's good to see microsoft putting something into themselves rather than just buying other companies. =================================================================================== jonty4321