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Cannibals

LowIQinvestor

By LowIQinvestor
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LowIQinvestor Newbie

LowIQinvestor

Posted
Posted

Anybody have an efficient way to generate a comprehensive list of companies who consistently buyback their shares and therefore significantly reduce the float over time?

 

Was thinking about what Munger said ---over the weekend:

 

    1. Carefully watch what other investors are doing

    2.  “Look at the cannibals” – look at businesses buying back huge amounts of stock

    3. Carefully study spin-offs

 

I know some of the large to mega-cap companies that do this well, but was looking to find some off the beaten path. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks

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giofranchi Newbie

giofranchi

Posted
Posted

Liberty Media?

 

Since the reclassification of the original Liberty Capital tracking stock on March 4, 2008 through April 30, 2013, 59.6 million shares have been repurchased at an average cost per share of $34.01 for total cash consideration of $2.0 billion. These repurchases represent 46.1% of the shares outstanding at the time of the introduction of the original Liberty Capital stock.

 

giofranchi

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Guest wellmont

Guest wellmont

Posted
Posted

just page through value line and focus on yearly trend of shares outstanding. s & p used to publish books annually with lists of companies where you could easily track shares outstanding.

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gfp Grand Master

gfp

Posted
Posted

I second the John Malone entities.  They usually check the spin-off and cannibal boxes.  DirecTV is a prime example that is ongoing and well publicized.    Gap Inc had a doosy of the buy-in a couple years ago that worked very well for them.  I sold the stock so I don't know it it is still active.  Prices changed on that one.

 

BP has repurchased over 1.5 Billion dollars worth of their shares since the end of the last quarter and is Klarman's largest equity holding, fwiw...

 

L also prominently features it's share retirement over time in its annual reports.

 

IBM is a well known share repurchaser as well, as highlighted in Berkshire's annual report.

 

Serial capital returners like RLI can be pretty enjoyable to own and forget about as well...

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no_free_lunch Rising Star

no_free_lunch

Posted
Posted

I have been working on this a bit and don't mind sharing some results.  Just keep in mind that my data-source is not the best and so some of these are not really cannibals but just data errors.  Nevertheless it should be less work to go through this than the entire stock universe.

 

These are all the stocks I could find which have reduced share count by 30% or more from 2006 to 2012.

 

SYMBOL, SHARE REDUCTION

 

'aap', -30.346465072655004

'abc', -40.05856873715785

'acat', -32.78435631183613

'acgl', -39.93088525644429

'ads', -37.72755607298557

'aet', -36.5116241192287

'aiz', -35.85059902983259

'am', -38.93951758262922

'amgn', -35.35897433546168

'an', -41.5429263703194

'ann', -32.01821008664114

'apol', -35.13263652199344

'aro', -33.53342664581492

'asa', -33.02083148739591

'asca', -41.790513454678134

'azo', -47.903769482304135

'bbsi', -37.600003344482715

'bcsb', -46.023685850231345

'biib', -30.041102124577712

'cake', -30.64822889681782

'cb', -36.35479661371769

'cce', -41.20369228475263

'cec', -44.57532615343115

'cec', -43.73837723309554

'cec', -46.81736991401472

'cec', -46.014277324705255

'ceco', -30.244412355332628

'cent', -31.515915041125155

'cht', -45.37041895266577

'chtr', -75.203410132527

'cmt', -30.098043610912796

'cprt', -31.23445032597373

'cpwr', -42.44244579352724

'crtx', -37.780401754290594

'czr', -32.63496797831307

'dds', -37.646615468866926

'dnb', -31.281200468283245

'dst', -32.72449301170558

'dtv', -52.28943375394506

'eat', -40.67513281546914

'esi', -43.1773858174457

'fonr', -55.61837613281568

'fstc', -42.69113555655386

'gps', -43.40657116550908

'grr', -39.388797043548976

'gsol', -33.39198632181234

'iaci', -42.45321633856024

'jctcf', -34.03361389752438

'lbtya', -35.50966359470029

'lea', -37.088525207194536

'lxk', -34.123711894505924

'mrh', -50.55466098526027

'mx', -32.39756847075912

'noc', -30.84817382804339

'pgi', -31.931578076452404

'prls', -78.9224394144082

'ptp', -45.165076493624746

'pze', -52.65120183226871

'qlgc', -39.058549822590784

'qlti', -31.387153629504894

'rnr', -36.87274637755027

'sfi', -33.80738144911996

'shld', -33.56250077998267

'sonc', -32.17126469251842

'stmp', -30.95989344897906

'stx', -31.238824453023017

'swy', -45.58055138831687

'symc', -30.384615031925165

'tmk', -35.965221985474074

'ty', -39.09977438118547

'wlp', -50.49227822035534

'wtm', -41.65120725927062

'wtw', -42.820509469955745

'zlc', -33.05630629828733

'ustr', -32.90064832696405

'vc', -59.68991952563941

'vrsn', -37.09399238869885

'fico', -41.31716526804615

'awh', -42.27898537157808

'big', -44.16747005805737

'eihi', -30.308370333232947

'eig', -41.635051986243276

'ipcc', -40.876655577820166

'jack', -31.921166517708997

'ntls', -51.36124372023113

'pgla', -39.379156001199036

'roiak', -49.225003004083746

'sapx', -33.997343957503325

'hckt', -30.452301643089985

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LC Mentor

LC

Posted
Posted

I have been working on this a bit and don't mind sharing some results.  Just keep in mind that my data-source is not the best and so some of these are not really cannibals but just data errors.  Nevertheless it should be less work to go through this than the entire stock universe.

 

These are all the stocks I could find which have reduced share count by 30% or more from 2006 to 2012.

 

SYMBOL, SHARE REDUCTION

 

'aap', -30.346465072655004

'abc', -40.05856873715785

'acat', -32.78435631183613

'acgl', -39.93088525644429

'ads', -37.72755607298557

'aet', -36.5116241192287

'aiz', -35.85059902983259

'am', -38.93951758262922

'amgn', -35.35897433546168

'an', -41.5429263703194

'ann', -32.01821008664114

'apol', -35.13263652199344

'aro', -33.53342664581492

'asa', -33.02083148739591

'asca', -41.790513454678134

'azo', -47.903769482304135

'bbsi', -37.600003344482715

'bcsb', -46.023685850231345

'biib', -30.041102124577712

'cake', -30.64822889681782

'cb', -36.35479661371769

'cce', -41.20369228475263

'cec', -44.57532615343115

'cec', -43.73837723309554

'cec', -46.81736991401472

'cec', -46.014277324705255

'ceco', -30.244412355332628

'cent', -31.515915041125155

'cht', -45.37041895266577

'chtr', -75.203410132527

'cmt', -30.098043610912796

'cprt', -31.23445032597373

'cpwr', -42.44244579352724

'crtx', -37.780401754290594

'czr', -32.63496797831307

'dds', -37.646615468866926

'dnb', -31.281200468283245

'dst', -32.72449301170558

'dtv', -52.28943375394506

'eat', -40.67513281546914

'esi', -43.1773858174457

'fonr', -55.61837613281568

'fstc', -42.69113555655386

'gps', -43.40657116550908

'grr', -39.388797043548976

'gsol', -33.39198632181234

'iaci', -42.45321633856024

'jctcf', -34.03361389752438

'lbtya', -35.50966359470029

'lea', -37.088525207194536

'lxk', -34.123711894505924

'mrh', -50.55466098526027

'mx', -32.39756847075912

'noc', -30.84817382804339

'pgi', -31.931578076452404

'prls', -78.9224394144082

'ptp', -45.165076493624746

'pze', -52.65120183226871

'qlgc', -39.058549822590784

'qlti', -31.387153629504894

'rnr', -36.87274637755027

'sfi', -33.80738144911996

'shld', -33.56250077998267

'sonc', -32.17126469251842

'stmp', -30.95989344897906

'stx', -31.238824453023017

'swy', -45.58055138831687

'symc', -30.384615031925165

'tmk', -35.965221985474074

'ty', -39.09977438118547

'wlp', -50.49227822035534

'wtm', -41.65120725927062

'wtw', -42.820509469955745

'zlc', -33.05630629828733

'ustr', -32.90064832696405

'vc', -59.68991952563941

'vrsn', -37.09399238869885

'fico', -41.31716526804615

'awh', -42.27898537157808

'big', -44.16747005805737

'eihi', -30.308370333232947

'eig', -41.635051986243276

'ipcc', -40.876655577820166

'jack', -31.921166517708997

'ntls', -51.36124372023113

'pgla', -39.379156001199036

'roiak', -49.225003004083746

'sapx', -33.997343957503325

'hckt', -30.452301643089985

 

Wow, great work! Thanks for sharing. If I may ask (and I would never ask that you divulge your secret sauce), where did you get the data to automate this process? The reason I ask is that I had been thinking of doing the same for quite some time, but I couldn't figure out where to get the share count data.

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Phaceliacapital Newbie

Phaceliacapital

Posted
Posted

I typically compile it using the "decrease in capital stock" - "increase in capital stock" items in bloomberg to see if the total change in capital stock was negative (good) or positive ("bad").

 

I have done this with parameters over the last 4, 8 and 12 quarters but I feel that there is still some finetuning left, as it currently does not account for the price at which it bought shares back..

 

Anyone interested in finetuning? In BB you can input almost everything I guess, of course the list would be made available here.

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John Galt Newbie

John Galt

Posted
Posted

Is there a way to do this for companies that opportunistically bought back shares in say 2009 when everyone's stock was dirt cheap? Steady is good, but I've tried and failed to screen for cannibals that had dry powder and knew what to do with it when it mattered. Plenty of companies were buying at the peak in 2008 then stopped to conserve capital during the depth of the recession, I think we are all looking for the company that did the opposite possibly even issuing shares before, only to buyback when they were cheap.

 

Also, this is my first post, but this board is the very best, I looked long and hard on the internet for a message board for investing that was logical, respectful, and full of well thought out useful ideas. Nothing else has even come close.

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no_free_lunch Rising Star

no_free_lunch

Posted
Posted

John,

 

The screen you are asking for is a bit trickier to do but definitely worthwhile.

 

One I found manually is ADS.  They bought back a bunch of stock in 08/09 when they were cheap and have since basically stopped buying back shares.  They have also grown their EPS by about 8x over the past decade.  Very interesting company albeit not particularly cheap right now.

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Guest hellsten

Guest hellsten

Posted
Posted

Weight Watchers International, Inc. WTW:

http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=WTW&region=USA&culture=en-us

 

Share count has gone from 110 to 56 million in 10 years.

 

WTW seems like a very high-quality business based on historic net margin and ROA figures.

 

Dun & Bradstreet Corporation DNB:

http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=DNB&region=USA&culture=en-us

 

Share count has gone from 76 to 44 million in 10 years.

 

High-quality company…

 

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Phaceliacapital Newbie

Phaceliacapital

Posted
Posted

Guys (girls),

 

as promised please find a list of 741 companies generated with the following formulas:

 

BB1: Total decrease in Cap Stock/MCAP

BB2: Total decrease in Cap Stock/MCAP in Y1

BB3: Total decrease in Cap Stock/MCAP in Y2

 

So BB1 is for the past year, BB2 for a the year before and BB3 for the year before. The companies included have each of these three measures < 0 (which means buyback in bloomberg language).

 

For your comfort I have provided the prices of the stock per year and included a rough FCF/EV metric (as calculated by BB analysts).

 

The red lines are clearly erronous formulas of some kind but I let them in anyway. Should you notice any mistake or come up with a better metric, please let me know, I think there is still some finetuning to do :)

 

Happy investing

 

BB.xlsx

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boilermaker75 Proficient

boilermaker75

Posted
Posted

Guys (girls),

 

as promised please find a list of 741 companies generated with the following formulas:

 

BB1: Total decrease in Cap Stock/MCAP

BB2: Total decrease in Cap Stock/MCAP in Y1

BB3: Total decrease in Cap Stock/MCAP in Y2

 

So BB1 is for the past year, BB2 for a the year before and BB3 for the year before. The companies included have each of these three measures < 0 (which means buyback in bloomberg language).

 

For your comfort I have provided the prices of the stock per year and included a rough FCF/EV metric (as calculated by BB analysts).

 

The red lines are clearly erronous formulas of some kind but I let them in anyway. Should you notice any mistake or come up with a better metric, please let me know, I think there is still some finetuning to do :)

 

Happy investing

 

Wow, thank you very much!

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