Why H-P Buyback Is Bad News For The Economy

Wall street Journal : the company said it will spend $10 billion buying its shares, which are languishing near the 52-week low. The timing defies the tendency of U.S. corporations to buy their own stock during the high points of the market and avoid buy backs during the troughs.


The latest buyback also is clearly a nod to investors who have endured months of turmoil, from CEO Mark Hurd’s surprise resignation to a bidding war for 3PAR, a relatively obscure network storage company. Concerns about a leadership void and concerns about overpaying for 3PAR have driven H-P shares down to yearly lows.

It is important to put the latest authorization into perspective. The $10 billion comes on top of $8 billion in buybacks authorized in November 2009. The total far exceeds the amount of money that the company has spent each year on M&A for the past nine years, excluding 2008, when the H-P spent $13 billion on Electronic Data Systems, according to data provider Dealogic. Also consider that the buybacks total 17% of H-P’s market capitalization. Investors, of course, love the buybacks. H-P shares are up 1.75%, while the broader market is down by nearly that amount.

But looking beyond the corporate parameters of H-P, the buyback arguably sends a dispiriting message about the state of technology industry and the overall economy. Consider that the buybacks come as H-P is spending increasingly less on Research and Development. In 2009, the company’s R&D budget was $2.8 billion, not much more than the the $2.3 billion it spent in 1998. As a percentage of revenue, the drop in R&D has been dramatic. R&D was 2.5% of revenue last year, compared with 6% of revenue in 1998.

To be sure, H-P’s revenues have expanded greatly over the past decade since it acquired Compaq and Electronic Data Services. Nonetheless, the fact that its R&D has not kept pace perhaps signals that a company, once known for its innovating prowess, is taking the easier route in keeping its shareholders happy.
As the recent bidding war for 3PAR illustrates, it is easier (and logical) to spend billions buying technology that others have created than spending that money on R&D that may or may not produce a viable product.
But that is not ideal for the broader economy, which benefits from the creation of new products to help it grow and create jobs.

Amid great economic uncertainty, H-P likely figures it can get more bang for its buck by focusing on the financial engineering of share buybacks than on the engineering of new technologies that made the company famous.