And so is every single big media company and a ton of other S&P 500 companies. They are all trying to drive their stock price up with buybacks. And have been rather successful at it for a few years. Comcast, Time Warner, Fox, CBS, Viacom, Disney etc are all in the midst of ongoing big buybacks.
As Sirius stock goes, so goes Liberty Media stock. Nobody can argue that fact. Sirius makes up such a huge portion of Liberty Media. Anybody that thinks Malone wants Sirius stock to be held down is fooling themselves.
I think Meyer has done a great job running the business. But the stock hasn't responded under him and nobody compares to Mel. If Mel ever comes back to media I see 2 avenues. A possible Sirius RMT. Or a possible Time Warner move on a CBS combo. In both cases you would have a NY based media company with an independent board/ no controlling shareholder. It may never happen. But I think there is a chance for both happening in the next year or so. Sirius and Time Warner are both logical moves.
I also believe that since Charter lost to Comcast on the big TWC deal there is no need now for Liberty to bring Sirius into the fold to fund a big cash and debt move for Liberty's cable business. There is nothing out there as big as TWC to acquire in cable and I believe that is why Liberty dropped its bid for Sirius. They were looking to help Charter out on TWC. Charter eventually worked out a very good deal but a much smaller piece than they were after because Comcast moved in. So Sirius' cash flow was not required for the smaller cable deal, and thus there was no reason to raise any bids for the company.