Staples recently announced a $1.5 billion dollar buyback which replaces its prior plan. "We see significant opportunities for growth," said Ron Sargent, Staples chairman and CEO in a statement. "Our strong balance sheet gives us the flexibility to fund our strategic initiatives and, at the same time, continue to return excess cash to shareholders." The stock trades for 8x cash flow.

Expedia announced a $3.5 billion dollar buyback. The Bellevue, Wash.-based company said it plans to repurchase as many as 116.7 million shares at $27.50 to $30 per share. The shares in the program represent 38% of all classes of the company's outstanding shares. The stock trades for 13x cash flow.

The Cupertino, CA based security software giant recently announced a new $2 billion dollar stock buyback program. This is on the heels of a $1 billion dollar program it began in January whereby it purchased 54 million shares for an average price of $18.51 per share. Not bad. The security software giant also recently reiterated both its Q1 and full year fiscal 2008 outlook. This was a breath of fresh air and much needed as the company had a very tough 2007 where growth in key business units had flattened. However, the company has added to its product line, invested in infrastructure and also believes the successful acquisition of storage company Veritas could move things in the right direction. CEO John Thompson noted that “in the long term, this is a company that can grow in the range of 8% to 12%...and our EPS growth should be two to three points above the revenue growth we produce in any given year.”

The CEO recently bought 100,000 shares or $3,605,000 worth of stock. There Dallas/Fort Worth's airport sits atop the Fort Worth Barnett Shale geologic structure, which contains big natural gas reserves. So a Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK) program to drill hundreds of wells on and near the facility in the next several years is also very much in the ascendancy. The stock trades for less than 6x cash flow.

The first reason we looked at Synta Pharmaceuticals Corp. (SNTA) was because we saw superstar investor and board member Bruce Kovner from Caxton Associates recently purchased 70,467 shares or nearly $600,000 worth of stock. Caxton is a $16 billion dollar New York-based trading and investment firm founded in 1983 by the legendary billionaire macro trader Kovner. Over the past ten years Caxton has supposedly returned 28%+ annually. The Lexington, MA based biotechnology company recently announced that its lead compound STA-4783 showed positive results in a mid-stage study for metastatic melanoma. Synta also said that plans to initiate a Phase III clinical trial to investigate STA-4783 as a first-line therapy for patients with metastatic melanoma in mid-2007. The stock also has received an Outperform rating from Bear Stearns.

After the market closed on Tuesday, Home Depot said it will sell Home Depot Supply to a group of private equity firms and repurchase $22.5 billion in stock, or about 30 percent of its shares. The stock trades for 7.5x cash flow.

The discount retailer recently announced it added $3 billion to its stock buyback program. The additional $3 billion takes the program to $8 billion total, $4 billion of which is remaining. The company also announced that it raised its quarterly dividend by 17% to $0.14 per share. The Minneapolis-based discount retailer recently announced solid Q1 results that beat expectations. The retailer surprised Wall Street and attributed it to solid profit numbers in its credit card unit, strong generic drug sales, and a strong showing across all retail offerings. "We are pleased with the strength of our first-quarter results in both our core retail and credit-card operations," Bob Ulrich, Target’s chief executive officer, said. "Our overall performance reinforces our confidence in our ability to continue to generate profitable market share growth for the full year 2007 and many years to come."

Teleflex announced a $300 million dollar buyback. Teleflex Incorporated engages in the design, manufacture, and distribution of engineered products for commercial, medical, and aerospace industries in North America, Europe, and Asia. The stock trades for 8x cash flow.