The Relationship between Shares Repurchases Decision and Firm Value from Accounting Prespective in the Light of "Covid-19" Pandemic An Applied Study on Egyptian Stock Exchange Listed Companies

Shares repurchasepractices are among the capital management tools that management should allocate more efficiently to manage the capital entrusted to it. Over the past two decades, share repurchase transactions have grown tremendously in many global markets, and these operations have also flourished in Egypt since March 2020 in response to the global financial turmoil caused by the spread of the "Covid-19" virus.
In the light of the presence of many mixed opinions regarding the impact of share repurchase decisions on the companies' financial situation, this research aimed to study whether the huge increases in repurchase operations negatively affected the growth of companies and capital formation, or whether this issue had positive effects on companies' capital and firm value?, Therefore the research aimed to test the effect of share repurchase operations on firm value in the Egyptian business environment and test the interactive effect of the repurchasing shares operations and its motives – share market value reduction, earning per share, and the financial leverage - on firm value.
The study sample included 57 companies with 627 observations for the period 2008-2018. In addition a sensitivity analysis is conducted, using a sample of 16 companies that repurchased their shares after the "Covid-19" pandemic, with 32 observations in relation to the second and third quarters of 2019 and 2020. The results of the study showed that there is a positive and significant effect of share repurchases operations on firm value, and the existence of a positive and significant effect of interactive variables for share repurchases and both the earning per share and share market value reduction on firm value. The results showed a lack of a significant effect of the interactive variable of share repurchases operations and financial leverage on firm value.The combined model showed that the variables of earning per share, share market value reduction and financial leverage are arranged in succession according to the strength of their effect on the volume of stock repurchases. The effect of share repurchases on firm value has not appeared after the "Covid-19" pandemic, due to the lack of sufficient time for investors to interact with share repurchases, and the strongest motivation for the decision to shares repurchase is the significant reduction in share prices.