RealD Shares Buoyed By $25M Increase To Stock Repurchase Plan

The 3D movie company’s stock is up 1.6% in mid-day trading after it increased the repurchase effort it announced in April to $75M from $50M. The change “demonstrates our confidence in RealD’s future and our commitment to maximizing shareholder value,” says CEO Michael Lewis. RealD says that as of Friday it had spent $46M to repurchase about 4.7M shares, leaving it with about 50M. The company’s stock price is down 26.6% since early July, and fell steeply at the end of that month when RealD reported fiscal Q1 earnings that were well below analyst expectations. The company notes that 3D films it expected in the current fiscal year, ending in March, were pushed into its next fiscal year; those films include Warner Bros’ The Great Gatsby, Universal’s 47 Ronin, and Sony’s Battle of the Year: The Dream Team. A few weeks ago Barrington Research’s James Goss upgraded RealD to “outperform” from “market perform” saying that the stock was trading at ”an attractive entry point for longer-term investors” who believe that the company can grow overseas, and that Hollywood will increase its output of 3D films.

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