Top 10 Practice Tips: Stock Repurchase Programs

This practice note includes 10 practice tips that may help you, as counsel to a public company or a repurchase agent, in implementing a stock repurchase program on behalf of your client. A stock repurchase program enables a company to buy back a certain number of its outstanding securities. In recent years, the repurchase activity undertaken by U.S. public companies has significantly increased, in part as a result of the tax reforms implemented in 2018. In addition, many companies that have completed recent significant strategic transactions have concurrently undertaken sizeable share repurchases. Shares repurchased by a company are either canceled or kept as treasury stock, which thereby reduces the number of outstanding shares and usually has the effect of increasing the company’s earnings per share.