SEBI Open Market Buyback Window: Who Wins?

SEBI Open Market Buyback Window Is Live, and the Math Favors a Few Clear Winners The open market buyback window is back. As of August 1, 2026, SEBI's reinstated framework gives listed Indian companies a third route alongside tender offers and book-building to return surplus capital to shareholders through stock exchange transactions. The 66-working-day completion deadline is the detail most investors are glossing over. It isn't just administrative housekeeping. It creates a specific, time-bound buying pressure in the secondary market that savvy traders have historically front-run with precision. The question isn't whether this is good policy. It's whether the companies most likely to announce buybacks are actually worth owning at current prices, or whether the buyback signal will mask underlying earnings stagnation dressed up as capital discipline. History offers a sobering data point. Between 2018 and 2022, Indian IT companies announced buybacks with near-annual regularity, and in roughly 60% of cases, the stock price underperformed the Nifty IT index in the 12 months following buyback completion. Buybacks boost EPS arithmetic. They don't fix revenue growth. IT Sector: The Obvious Candidate With Non-Obvious Risks The IT sector carries the heaviest buyback pedigree. [Infosys](/stock/INFY) (NSE: INFY) has completed four open market and tender buybacks since 2017, returning over ₹38,000 crore to shareholders across those cycles. [TCS](/stock/TCS) (NSE: TCS) has bought back shares in five of the last seven years. With both companies sitting on net cash positions well above ₹20,000 crore as of their most recent balance sheets, neither is short of ammunition. The environment has shifted, though. INFY and TCS are both navigating a demand environment where enterprise IT spending in North America and Europe remains cautious heading into late 2026. A buyback announcement from either company in the next 90 days would almost certainly lift the stock 3 to 6% in the near t...