Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Qualcomm engineers its financial product
Company will buy back $15 billion of stock
On the day of its annual meeting in San Diego (March 9), Qualcomm announced a a plan to buy back $15 billion of its common stock. It still has $2.1 billion stock it can buy back under a previous buyback authorization. The company will buy back $10 billion of its stock within the next year.
Qualcomm also announced a 14 percent increase in its common stock dividend, raising the annual payment to $1.92 a share. Qualcomm has not had great news of late (it will pay a huge fine in China), and it figures it will appease shareholders.
Stock buybacks are considered quintessential financial engineering. A company can use cash on hand or borrow money for a cheap interest rate to buy back its own stock. This reduces the number of shares outstanding and artificially boosts earnings per share. Generally, the stock will move up. Critics say this money should be spent on production of goods and services — not manipulation of earnings per share.
Think of it this way: today is the anniversary of the beginning of the six-year bull market. Corporate profits have hit new records but world economies have been very weak, particularly for a post-recession recovery period. So, why have earnings been so strong? Part of the explanation lies in automation improvements and other economies. But the bulk of the explanation is financial engineering. In this six-year bull market, earnings have soared because they are being manipulated through financial engineering ploys.
(This doesn't mean I am abandoning stocks. I am still buying them because the returns on alternatives — bonds and cash — are so anemic.)
Here's something you might be interested in.
Qualcomm engineers its financial product
Company will buy back $15 billion of stock
Qualcomm engineers its financial product
Company will buy back $15 billion of stock
On the day of its annual meeting in San Diego (March 9), Qualcomm announced a a plan to buy back $15 billion of its common stock. It still has $2.1 billion stock it can buy back under a previous buyback authorization. The company will buy back $10 billion of its stock within the next year.
Qualcomm also announced a 14 percent increase in its common stock dividend, raising the annual payment to $1.92 a share. Qualcomm has not had great news of late (it will pay a huge fine in China), and it figures it will appease shareholders.
Stock buybacks are considered quintessential financial engineering. A company can use cash on hand or borrow money for a cheap interest rate to buy back its own stock. This reduces the number of shares outstanding and artificially boosts earnings per share. Generally, the stock will move up. Critics say this money should be spent on production of goods and services — not manipulation of earnings per share.
Think of it this way: today is the anniversary of the beginning of the six-year bull market. Corporate profits have hit new records but world economies have been very weak, particularly for a post-recession recovery period. So, why have earnings been so strong? Part of the explanation lies in automation improvements and other economies. But the bulk of the explanation is financial engineering. In this six-year bull market, earnings have soared because they are being manipulated through financial engineering ploys.
(This doesn't mean I am abandoning stocks. I am still buying them because the returns on alternatives — bonds and cash — are so anemic.)
Comments