It managed to reduce the float by 215M shares, indicating an average net price per share of $203 during the entire five-year span. That compares very unfavorably to the current price of $144 and indicates that the shares IBM has bought back in the past five years are worth right at $12.8B less than what it paid. Further, that implies that one-quarter of IBM’s total buyback spending was lost to frictional costs, including unfavorable timing as well as issuances. While that’s not particularly great, it is (unfortunately) pretty normal among mega caps that hand out lots of stock-based compensation. That doesn’t make it a good result, but IBM certainly isn’t alone in terms of buybacks that haven’t gone all that well. Keep in mind also that the very low stock price in comparison to years past makes the buyback look very unfavorable given that many shares were purchased at much higher prices than today. The flip side is that IBM can load up at today’s prices, but as I said, it doesn’t look like management is particularly keen to do that if the first half of 2017 is any indication.
