A college professor explained to me in my senior capstone business strategy class why share buybacks are a terrible idea. They signal to investors that you have

A college professor explained to me in my senior capstone business strategy class why share buybacks are a terrible idea. They signal to investors that you have nothing better to do with the money than buy your own stock. Instead of investing in R&D, buying assets, streams of income, creating new products, renovating facilities, or even paying your own people, a stock buyback says that all of those things are basically a worse ROI on the business than just handing the money over to shareholders. In general, I think my professor was right. I think there are good reasons to potentially buy out investors and so on, but usually these programs are done under the guise of making shareholders richer, but I just don't see that as the case. The best way to enrich shareholders is by simply giving them a dividend, or by running a more profitable business (which will drive up the stock price). Everything else is basically financial machinations that look good, but are mostly meaningless.