SiliconBeat

The same day it announced buying back 2.1 million shares and completing the last $50 million worth of a $100 million stock buyback approved a year ago, Macrovision said it intends to buy back $60 million more.

Shares of Macrovision closed Tuesday at $23.04, little changed since the $100 million buyback was approved in August 2006.

“The repurchase program reflects our efforts to return value to our stockholders,” said
Chief Financial Officer James Budge in a statement.

Among the stockholders getting some value returned would be the company’s chief executive, Alfred Amoroso, who sold Macrovision shares earlier this month for the first time since joining the company in July 2005. He sold 31,250 shares of restricted stock for $741,461, for an average of $23.73 per share, at his first opportunity following their vesting on Saturday, Sept. 1.

The restricted stock was granted to Amoroso in July 2006 following a change in his original employment contract.

When Amoroso was hired in July 2005, he as given an option to buy 500,000 shares of
Macrovision with a strike price of $22.95, and it was agreed he would be awarded additional option grants for 125,000 shares twice a year, the first of which he received in March 2006 when shares were trading at $20.90.

But on July 28, 2006, with Macrovision shares trading at below the strike price on both option grants, Amoroso’s employment agreement was amended to change the recurring option awards to awards of restricted stock, which, unlike options, would retain some value even if Macrovision shares don’t rise in price. The stock he sold earlier this month were the first to vest from his first restricted award for 125,000 shares given to him Sept. 1, 2006.

Amoroso’s shares were sold under a trading plan set up May 23 when Macrovision shares were trading at $26.79. The company’s shares jumped earlier that month after it reported earnings May 8 that beat expectations.

Two weeks later, on June 5, the company announced a restructuring approved by its board May 31 that included a “workforce reduction in headcount” of about seven percent (some 60 employees) costing $2.9 million.

On July 13, Macrovision shares plunged 12 percent after the company announced preliminary results for its second quarter that fell short of its own guidance given six weeks earlier.

Second quarter profits plunged 63 percent to $2.5 million from $6.8 million in the year before quarter, while sales slid 2 percent to $57.1 million.

Chief Financial Officer Budge said on Tuesday that he expected that the new repurchase program would be “accretive” to Macrovision’s earnings per share, i.e., make them bigger by dividing profits by a smaller number of shares outstanding. But despite having bought 2.3 million of its own shares last year, the number of Macrovision shares outstanding were actually 3 percent higher as of June 30 compared with the year before.

So far this month Budge has sold 15,971 shares for $386,272, for an average price of $24.19. Of those, 6,596 shares were acquired for $124,913, or an average of $18.94. (He, too, had his employment agreement changed in July 2006 to include restricted stock awards in place of option grants.)

His sales were part of a trading plan he set up Sept. 6, 2006, a month after the company
authorized using $50 million of a $240 million convertible note sale for the stock buy back during the third quarter of 2006.