Don't forget that they actually don't have to buy back the stock at higher prices.
"The Corporation intends to purchase, if it considers it advisable to do so, up to a maximum of 1,000,000 Common Shares, being 7.7% of the Corporation's "public float", comprised of 12,963,565 of the presently issued and outstanding Common Shares of the Corporation."
If the prices go up significantly, they won't buy any more. However, if the prices stay low and they buy back a million shares, they are effectively increasing their per share profit. Along with Martin's idea of paying out a "dividend", this could effectively give the shorts a rough ride. As there are 15,814,890 issued and outstanding shares, that means that they are about 3 million shares short. I have my doubts that Hummingbird will actually retire one million shares. They announced a share buyback before and from what I can remember they didn't retire any shares.
Tom W. |
