Open Market Buybacks Return: Who Buys Next?

Open Market Buybacks Are Back, and the Queue Is Long Cast your mind back to 2023, when [Tata Consultancy Services](/stock/TCS) ran one of India's most talked-about buyback programs, mopping up shares at a premium and handing retail investors a clean exit window. TCS had done this before, in 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2022, almost like clockwork. Then SEBI pulled the plug on open market buybacks in September 2024, forcing companies into the tender offer route instead. Quieter. Less exciting. Fewer participants. Now the mechanism is coming back. Effective August 1, 2026, SEBI has reinstated open market buybacks through stock exchanges, with a tighter operational framework attached. Companies must complete the program within 66 working days and deploy at least 40% of the earmarked amount in the first half of that window. That front-loading requirement is the real story here. It creates a predictable price-support floor in the early weeks, which changes how traders and long-term investors should position ahead of an announcement. The first wave of announcements is already priced in by the market. The more interesting question is who comes next. IT Majors Have the Cash, and the Motive Large-cap IT is the most obvious hunting ground. [TCS](/stock/TCS) (NSE: TCS) closed FY25 with ₹55,049 crore in cash and investments on its balance sheet. Its capital allocation policy has consistently prioritized buybacks when internal cash generation exceeds reinvestment needs, and with revenue growth tracking in the 4-5% range for FY26, there's limited appetite for aggressive M&A. A buyback at current valuations would be earnings-per-share accretive. TCS trades near 24x trailing earnings, and buying back stock at that price signals genuine confidence rather than financial engineering. [Infosys](/stock/INFY) (NSE: INFY) is a similar case. The company returned over ₹20,000 crore to shareholders in FY24 through buybacks and dividends combined. Its free cash flow conversion rate has stayed ...