[MikeCapone]

Stock buybacks are just a way to return capital to shareholders at a lower tax rate than dividends.

You just reduce the number of slices of the pie, so that each slice is a little bigger. There's nothing nefarious about it, it's one of many valid ways to allocate capital as long as they buy the shares at fair valuation (or better, when they are undervalued). You usually do that if you wouldn't get a higher return by putting that money to work somewhere else.