Accounting Performance of Firms Pursuing a Share Repurchase Strategy

Drawing from earlier work and market sentiment, two non‐mutually exclusive hypotheses were framed to test the proposition that share repurchase programs are a performance improving strategy. To achieve the above, a large sample of companies that repurchased shares is compared to a matched sample of companies not pursuing a share repurchase strategy. The comparative analysis covers numerous time intervals. In comparing the accounting performance of repurchasing companies to that of non‐repurchasing companies, Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE), Return on Sales (ROS), Book‐to‐Market (B/M), Earnings per Share (EPS), and Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) are applied. The primary conclusion drawn from the performance of these indicators is a high degree of difference in the performance of repurchasing and non‐repurchasing firms. There is also evidence to suggest, at least in the aggregate repurchasing sample, that the performance of repurchasing companies fails to significantly improve in the post announcement period.