By pulling shares out of circulation, share repurchases lift earnings per share, but not actual earnings.
Trinity is the leading UK regional publisher, because of its 22% share of total circulation, and Sprague speculates it may fall foul of the OFT if there are places where its titles overlap with those of Northcliffe and/or Iliffe.
It will now have extra capacity to pursue its goal of increasing its share of foreign circulation coinage from the current 10% to 15% (among its recent issues were 40m one-balboa ($1) coins for Panama in 2011).
Australia has the highest concentration of newspaper ownership in the world, dominated by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and with the top three newspaper companies taking a 98% share of daily circulation, compared with 26% in the US and 62% in the UK.
With so many shares out of circulation, stocks swing rapidly when large orders are placed, leaving individual investors with losses.
The trend of sharper declines on Sundays is troubling, given that the day accounts for the largest share of advertising and circulation revenue for most newspapers.
%Turnover equals to percentage of the result of Vol divided by the total number of circulation shares.
"Now what's happened since then is that you've seen Murdoch's share of metropolitan daily newspaper circulation as high as it ever was but the share of the total media pie represented by newspapers has got smaller," he said.
The Murdochs have the largest circulation share of any newspaper group (just under 30% weekday and over a third on Sunday); and with full control of Sky, just under 20% of the TV news market; and around 45% of radio audience through Sky's supply of news content to commercial radio.
Its Editora Abril arm has a market share of 54% of magazine circulation and 58% of magazine advertising revenues in Brazil.
