Stock price would have increased during the buy back, and then if issued again price should drop.
After the executives have received their bonuses for the year. But don't worry, there will be time to have more buybacks before next bonus season.
I believe buybacks artificially inflate the price of stock and the effect is cumulative. When new shares are issued, their market price starts at the new inflated price they were manipulated to. So new shares are being bought for more than they should have.
Some companies have even been taking on new debt to use the borrowed money for buybacks during the deranged near zero interest rate insanity. New investors buying the inflated stock may have no inkling how much they are paying for hot air. All they know is the stock price has been going up so it looks like the company is growing and doing well. Current investors may not realize how much of the "real" value stock they bought previously is being diluted by sketchy debt.
Companies don't build real value by playing stock games. You build value by increasing production capacity, investing in long term R&D, hiring top level talent and upgrading the skill-sets of your current employees through more training. Developing new products. Heck, even using that money for acquisitions to vertically consolidate or expand to new markets or simply remove a potential competitor. It's insane to watch companies throw vast resources into buybacks while simultaneously slashing R&D. Temporary sugar high that gets a CEO a big bonus that employees and long term stock-holders will pay dearly for later.
Just like I don't think Nations "create wealth" by moving a decimal point around on an interest rate. Nations create wealth by developing new natural resources, improving technology to use resources more efficiently, growing production capacity, increasing population, improving citizen education levels to shift the value-added scale higher. etc.
Fiddling with zero interest rates, like stock buybacks don't create "real" wealth. They simply shift future wealth to the present. Soon or later someone has to pay that bill when the future wealth is found missing.
There might be some legitimate uses for stock buybacks. I'm skeptical. I certainly don't think they have been justifies at the levels we've over the last 10 years. To me it smells like simple blatant stock manipulation, which used to be illegal in the country. Buybacks used to be recognized as manipulation and used to be illegal. Then we got all financially fancy-pants.
This guy probably makes the point better than me. I would be willing to accept his compromise I guess.
I would probably also add a mandatory big double font size warning on the stock prospectus in red font "This company has engaged in stock buybacks in the last year and current market price for this stock may be distorted." like a cigarette package warning.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/aalsin/2017/02/28/shareholders-should-be-required-to-vote-on-stock-buybacks/#4cbc88546b1e[Edit] In regards to the original point, I'm certainly not giving corp billions of dollar in tax money collected from regular working folk while that corp still has 10's of billions in bought back stock they could liquidate first to cover this emergency. When they've burned through their retained earnings and though their 5-year stock buyback cache, then I'm willing to help them if we still aren't through this.
