News: VRS Veris Says It Will Commence On-Market Share Buy-Back For Up To 10% Of Shares, page-3

It reduces cash and reduces equity.

In general it weakens the balance sheet in that net assets reduces.

However if a company has far too much cash for its needs going forward then it should return it to shareholders one way or another or choose to pay of debt depending on the cost of the debt.

For Veris it is the opposite of what they said weeks and months ago. So they say one thing for the market and then change their mind. Not sure why. It was obvious when they sold Aquara this was the logical thing to do.

Reading between the lines I suspect they are generating cash from operations and they suspect the cash will build up in the future.

Given they would have losses to carry forward they will not have franking credits from company tax paid to attach to any dividend so returning capital to shareholders it the only (tax) effective way to get the money back to them. (note I have not looked up their franking account).

So to return cash to shareholders they need to do a buy back or partial return of capital paid up - most companies choose the former over the later.