when earnings per share go up the price to earnings ratio goes down this should signal that the stock is undervalued it doesn t though if the company changed the number by simply repurchasing shares 
it is particularly worrisome when a company takes on additional debt to finance stock repurchases companies might do this to artificially inflate the per share price of their stock by reducing the number of shares available for purchase on the open market thus giving the impression that the value of the stock has increased 