I think the parent poster stated it pretty clearly: the problem they're trying to solve is how to keep the stock price floating at a multiple of what the busine

I think the parent poster stated it pretty clearly: the problem they're trying to solve is how to keep the stock price floating at a multiple of what the business's actual fundamentals suggest it should be. The problem is, while that worked well for a good 10 or 20 years, it seems that people are now starting to catch on to the scheme. But I'm not sure that means that you can just stop doing it. As someone elsewhere in the thread pointed out, dragging things out as much as you can is probably preferable to a sudden and brutal value correction for just about everyone with actual skin in the game.