Retirement of Securities

See: Retired Securities.

You're a public company. Your stock cratered from $50 to $12. So you buy it back by the bushel. It becomes Treasury Stock. And it then goes through the paperwork to retire it, make it go away, stop existing.

It's a whole process, and you're happy to shrink your shares outstanding and authorized as you retire them. Fewer slices of your pie you have to share with others. Sometimes being a Scrooge is good.