FIN 6301-Unit III Essay-C

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May 22, 2024

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1 Unit III Essay Caroline A. Austin Columbia Southern University FIN 6301 Corporate Financing Professor Andrew Borg 16 April 2024
2 Unit III Essay Introduction. In the Investor’s Business Daily dated 26 July 2018, the author Aparna Narayanan put out an article which is titled “Royal Dutch Shell Finally Delivers Big Stock Buyback, But Shares Break Support”. This article information is pertaining to the Royal Dutch Shell Company Also known as Shell is a multinational oil company of the Dutch and British organizations. It is a very large oil petroleum corporation in the world. It engages in crude oil and natural gas. The company explores, produces, refine, and largest over 90 countries around the globe. This company is the second largest private sector energy corporation in the world and one of the six “supermajor”. Stock buybacks can signal a lot of confidence that the company has for the future. A drop in stock prices can spur the company to buy back its stock in order to stabilize its dividends and offer reliable income for its shareholders. Stable Dividend Policies Importance The importance of a stable dividend policy builds trust, confidence with investors, ensures regular and predictable dividend distribution, fostering investor confidence regardless of market fluctuations. It also puts a steady dividend payment out every given period regardless of the volatility in the market. The policy helps to maintain the market value of stocks and inspire confidence. The firm gets a more helpful grip on the finances that can be sourced from external resources and attract smaller shareholders who intend to earn regular income from their investment (Brigham & Ehrhardt, 2020). Therefore, the company distributes fixed amount of cash dividends, in turn it creates a reserve. This will pay a fixed dividend even when earnings are low or if there is any losses.
3 A constant dividend policy will be more suitable for a company whose earnings remain stable over a number of years. A dividend policy is what a company distributes profit to its shareholders. Dividends are a form of cash payment or share of stock and is paid to a class of shareholders. The policy sets a guideline that set out to determine what portions of a company’s profit will be paid to shareholders. Two main theories have emerged on how relevant dividends are to an investor. One is the dividend irrelevance theory which basically proposes that issuance of dividends should have little to no impact on stock prices. The second is the bird in hand theory which argues that investors prefer dividends to future growth and capital gains from re-investing profit. Stock Repurchases Reasons Stock repurchases occur when share pricing is undervalued and management may seek the opportunity when the stock is trading at a lower price while the company’s valuation is much higher (Stunda, 2017). To boost the share price the company will buy back shares to increase the share price when the outstanding share decreases and the demand remain the same. This procedure is also to get rid of surplus stocks and change the capital structure by decreasing the outstanding number of shares in the market that will impact supply and demand. Due to of this the number of shares will increase as the number of shares decrease. Individual financial metrics influenced by stock repurchase plans and returns Earnings per share and cashflow per share are metrics that are most affected by share repurchases. Return on assets increase because when using cash to repurchase the shares, it reduces the assets on the balance sheet. Return on equity increases because there is less equity on the balance sheet. Many companies will strive to reward their shareholders through continuous dividend increases and regular share buybacks. Share purchases will have a positive
4 impact on the investor’s portfolio because the share repurchases value depends on the stock markets future price, buybacks come with more uncertainty than dividends. Even though stock repurchases can have an impact, the earnings per share (EPS) are affected. The number of outstanding shares decreasing will in turn cause the earnings per share to increase. This will attract more investors and in turn will drive up the stock prices. The return on equity is affected by the buybacks that also with the reduction of outstanding shares will cause the equity base to go up, which then boosts the company’s return on equity. One downside to this is shortage of capital or cash flow that is unavailable. This can cause the company to borrow the cash to pay for stock repurchase. The company’s debt to equity ratio can increase that can increase risk or lead to a financial leverage for resources. The company must be careful so that the resources do not lead to an overvalue of stocks and cause a reduction of shareholder value. Every company has some sort of buyback policy in order to maintain its financial metrics and stock values. Stability of the company’s dividends are important to attract investors. All evaluations must be closely monitored to assess the markets and financial status for any stock repurchasing procedures that would be utilized to prevent potential risks. Amazon DWC Amazon is one of the biggest businesses dealing in the delivery business since 1995 (Bentley, 2017). In 1997, Amazon sold its stock after receiving its IPO at $18 dollars a share. Despite lawsuits with Barnes and Noble and Walmart. Amazon survived in order to have its shares rise and sell at $94 in 2001. By 2005 Amazon launched Amazon Prime, the service gave users unlimited two-day delivery of one million items in stock for a membership payment of $79 dollars a year. In 2007, Kindle, Music, Amazon Fresh were launched.
5 By 2009 Amazon was buying out the smaller competition companies so his vision of Amazon being the biggest delivery company would come true. It was also of being accused of anti-competitive behavior, but it did not stop Amazon from getting its hands on Zappos for 850 million. In 2011 Amazon has amazon videos which gave members access to over 5000 movies and TV shows. In 2014 Amazon acquires Twitch and paid $970 million for the stream on-line video gaming website. Amazon then launched its programs called Echo and Alexa complete with Apple’s Siri and Google’s Cortana. 2015 was the year Amazon opens its physical retail stores but unfortunately 68 of its stores were closed. Amazon’s kindle fire has been running full steam and is a top competitor in the market. Amazon then made some changes and continues to be the most customer centric company (Bentley, 2017) . Amazon Q4-2023 annual report dated 31 December 2023 announced the results of its fourth quarter report (About Amazon, 2024). The Net sales increased 14% to $170.0 billion in the third quarter. Operating income increased to $13.2 billion in the third quarter, compared to $2.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022 (About Amazon, 2024). The report showed a net income was reported at $10.6 billion for 2023, or $1.00 per diluted share, compared with the $0.3 billion, or $0.0.03 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2022 (About Amazon, 2024). Amazon’s working capital is its investment in current assets such as cash, marketable securities, inventory, and accounts receivable ( Brigham & Ehrhardt, 2020). To figure out the current days of working capital that is available, Amazon would use this formula: operating current assets minus operating current liabilities to get the net operating working capital. Currently Amazon fourth quarter reported current assets total is $172,351. Current liabilities total is $164,917 which is subtracted from $172,351 equals to 7,434 million. Take the total and multiply the working capital days of 365of the year will give you the working capital
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