A short while ago I decided not to short EDU. Today the EDU stock buy back program confirmed my reasoning. Here is their buy back plan (CNNMoney): New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) Thursday said its board had approved the buyback of 1 million American Depositary shares. The program is effective between Feb. 25 and Dec. 31, 2008.
According to Yahoo Finance, EDU has 37.54 million shares outstanding, and 3.55 million shares float. I verified it: those are ADR shares (note one ADR is equal to 4 ordinary shares for EDU).
No I haven’t got the stock buyback information from CEO Michael Yu in advance.
I remember in last conference call CFO Louis Hsieh said they would buy back stocks when they can not find other compelling opportunities (a.k.a, acquisition targets). It appears the competition landscape of China private education has been intensified in last few years.