Direct Repurchase

A direct repurchase is when a publicly traded company says, “hmm...can we buy those back?” to shareholders. "We sold our shares originally to this group in the IPO—but now, we think they're just too stupidly cheap. So we're buying them back."

Why? Well, the buying back makes the number of shares floating around in the market less, which makes the earnings per share go up, all else equal. The direct repurchase option happens when companies are directly in the market buying back their own stock directly...from the investor who owned it previously.