"If you spend $1.22 on buying back a share. Yes, you "lose" the...

"If you spend $1.22 on buying back a share. Yes, you "lose" the $1.22 from cash BUT you decrease the shares on issue by 1. The current market value being $1.22 means its a zero sum gain."

Zero sum game for the share price (if perfectly efficient pricing).
But market cap falls by the cash expended. It's similar to a capital return - the company is in a worse financial position after the buy-back.

But the expectation is:

Market cap falls from say $300m to $270m from a huge buy-back, but the company makes profits over the coming years, and say profit changes from $50m to $48m due to the $30m lost cash unable to be utilised. In the 2 scenarios:

$300m + $50m profit = 16.6% return for all holders.
$270m + $48m profit = 17.8% return for residual holders. So the buy-back was beneficial, as in this case there was little need for that excess cash (it only had a small negative impact on profit).

But in the case of KCN, there's significant utility from that cash - reducing expensive short term debt, or refurbishing/mining quicker. That makes a buy-back less attractive.

Same with the bonuses. We're missing out on the high utility from that missing cash - reducing expensive short term debt, or refurbishing/mining quicker.