Anatomy of Aborted Stock Repurchases

The motivation and characteristics of firms that announce stock repurchase programs but do not carry them out are poorly understood. We conjecture that the long-term earnings quality of such firms is low, which makes them poor candidates for subsequent stock purchase. Their announcement is just a bluff, possibly to get a short-term bounce in their stock price. We find evidence of poor long-term earnings quality in these firms in the pre-purchase period with further deterioration in the post-purchase period. A probit model confirms that poor long-term quality of accruals, a proxy for earnings quality, increases the chance of not carrying through on the repurchase announcement. We find a significant relationship between long-term earnings quality and subsequent performance for firms that carry through on their purchase plans but no such evidence for firms that do not.