Ann: Daily share buy-back notice - Appendix 3E, page-4

What is "buyback credibility"? The purpose of buying back shares is to use excess cash to increase the value of the remaining shareholdings. It does this by reducing the number of shares on issue and thus increasing the %age holding of each remaining shareholder. There is a distinct advantage in buying back shares at the lowest possible price - that way, each dollar used in the buy-back delivers the highest possible increase in %age holding.

So it is nonsense to judge a share buy-back by how much it pushes up the share price. That is not the purpose of a share buy-back. Not only does it reduce the value of the buy-back, but the exchange has very specific rules aimed at preventing it.

Most of us seem to agree that the share price is way below fundamental value, so the buy-back is doing very well if it can pick up its shares at this level. That is indeed what it is doing. OK, so it hasn't been buying as many as some of us would have liked, but that looks to me to be the only legitimate criticism.