A treasury stock or reacquired stock is stock which is bought back by the issuing company, reducing the amount of outstanding stock on the open market ("open market" including insiders' holdings).
Stock repurchases are often used as a tax-efficient method to put cash into shareholders' hands, rather than paying dividends. Sometimes, companies do this when they feel that their stock is undervalued on the open market. Other times, companies do this to provide a "bonus" to incentive compensation plans for employees. Rather than receive cash, recipients receive an asset that might appreciate in value faster than cash saved in a bank account. Another motive for stock repurchase is to protect the company against a takeover threat.
The United Kingdom equivalent of treasury stock as used in the United States is treasury share. Treasury stocks in the UK refers to government bonds or gilts.
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When shares are repurchased, they may either be canceled or held for reissue. If not canceled, such shares are referred to as treasury shares. Technically, a repurchased share is a company's own share that has been bought back after having been issued and fully paid.
The possession of treasury shares does not give the company the right to vote, to exercise pre-emptive rights as a shareholder, to receive cash dividends, or to receive assets on company liquidation. Treasury shares are essentially the same as unissued capital and no one advocates classifying unissued share capital as an asset on the balance sheet, as an asset should have probable future economic benefits. Treasury shares simply reduce ordinary share capital.
In an efficient market, a company buying back its stock should have no effect at all on its stock price. If the market fairly prices a company's shares at $50/share, and the company buys back 100 shares for $5,000, it now has $5,000 less cash but there are 100 fewer shares outstanding; the net effect should be that the value per share is unchanged. However, buying back shares does improve certain per-share ratios, such as price/earnings (earnings per share is increased due to fewer shares outstanding), but since the market risk increases by the same amount, the share value remains unchanged.
If the market is not efficient, the company's shares may be underpriced. In that case a company can benefit its other shareholders by buying back shares. If a company's shares are overpriced, then a company is actually hurting its remaining shareholders by buying back stock.
One other reason for a company to buy back its own stock is to reward holders of stock options. Call option holders are hurt by dividend payments, since, typically, they are not eligible to receive them. A share buyback program may increase the value of remaining shares (if the buyback is executed when shares are under-priced); if so, call option holders benefit. A dividend payment short term always decreases the value of shares after the payment, so, for stocks with regularly scheduled dividends, on the day shares go ex-dividend, call option holders always lose whereas put option holders benefit. (This doesn't apply to unscheduled (special) dividends since the strike prices of options are typically adjusted to reflect the amount of the special dividend.) Finally, if the sellers into a corporate buyback are actually the call option holders themselves, they may directly benefit from temporarily unrealistically favourable pricing.
A company does not benefit by helping call stock options holder so this is not an incentive. A company will not do it for this reason except for the case in which the decision makers for the company have the incentive of profiting which is indeed illegal.
The company can either retire the shares (however, retired shares are not listed as treasury stock on the company's financial statements) or hold the shares for later resale. Buying back stock reduces the number of outstanding shares. To see this, note that accompanying the decrease in the number of shares outstanding is a reduction in company assets, in particular, cash assets, which are used to buy back shares.
On the balance sheet, treasury stock is listed under shareholder equity as a negative number. The accounts may be called equity reduction or contra-equity.
One way of accounting for treasury stock is with the cost method. In this method, the paid-in capital account is reduced in the balance sheet when the treasury stock is bought. When the treasury stock is sold back on the open market, the paid-in capital is either debited or credited if it is sold for more or less than the initial cost respectively.
Another common way for accounting for treasury stock is the par value method. In the par value method, when the stock is purchased back from the market, the books will reflect the action as a retirement of the shares. Therefore, common stock is debited and treasury stock is credited. However, when the treasury stock is resold back to the market the entry in the books will be the same as the cost method.
In either method, any transaction involving treasury stock cannot increase the amount of retained earnings. If the treasury stock is sold for more than cost, then the paid-in capital treasury stock is the account that is increased, not retained earnings. In auditing financial statements, it is a common practice to check for this error to detect possible attempts to "cook the books."
In the United States, buybacks are covered by multiple laws under the auspices of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to SEC Rule 10b-18:
In addition, a company planning to repurchase stock (either through a specific tender offer or through open market or private purchases) may be required to disclose that information in an SEC filing.
In the UK, the Companies Act of 1955 disallowed companies from holding their own shares. However, the Companies Act of 1993 later repealed this.