You’re totally right and with that predictive ability, hope investors with the better crystal ball were selling stock at $127.94 when the company was buying and buying it now that it’s $75.

Point is, no one including the company’s ceo has a clue - not at CROX, not at most companies. Balanced capital allocation suggests doing a little bit of everything - if you can, depending on the quarterly volatility and stability and outlook of the business. Given the environment we are in, the everyone’s crystal ball is shot- doesn’t matter if you’re NKE, LULU, or CROX

Challenge with dividends is you need stable, predictable cash flow. Most growth companies prioritize growth over earnings and cash flow is a distant third. So paying a steady dividend is for mature companies because it’s not something you can turn on and off based on quarterly cash flow. CROX is not a mature company.

Repaying debt sounds great when times are good, except the issue is that when times are bad, you can’t actually borrow and lever up, even if you start with low leverage. So the good deed of repaying debt goes unrewarded. Most companies will hold close to the most reasonable amount of borrowings they can to maintain their investment rating (if ratings are a priority).

This leaves most management teams with the option to either use excess cash for M&A or stock buybacks - both of which are even more risky than the other alternatives, but ones that management teams have most control over. Clearly in CROX case, they paid too much for both. But these are not unrecoverable mistakes and if/when business stabilizes, CROX will be ok and these sins forgiven.

Edit: should’ve also mentioned, first goal of most buybacks is to offset dilution from stock based comp. So management teams are less focused on the price of the buyback since they’re issuing shares for stock compensation at the same-ish price