By VERNON CLEMENT JONES, Guardian Business Editor, vernon@nasguard.com

Cable Beach will likely continue its campaign of buying back shares from BISX investors until growth in the exchange silences concerns about undervaluation.

"One of our mandates is to maintain capital gains for our shareholders," said Cable Bahamas finance head Barry Williams. "Because of a lack of liquidity on BISX and our concerns about the undervaluation of our shares we will likely continue to use normal course issuer bids as a way of protecting share values and increasing liquidity."

Those issuer bids — more common on Wall Street than BISX — allow a publicly traded company to purchase shares its own shares back from investors. That's only if shareholders put them up on the market.

According to the cable and internet provider's last quarterly report, it added another 3,000 shares to the 283,000 it has bought back since June 2006.

That most recent purchase saw the company shell out $29,000. CAB (Cable's trading symbol) may ultimately recoup some of that money: Its current inventory of 289,000 re-acquired shares will save the company about $70,000 in dividend payments each year — money it would have shelled out had the shares remained in investor hands.

That small financial windfall of sorts is not the driving force behind use of issuer bidding, Williams was quick to point out Thursday.

He again referenced BISX and its relatively immature and limited market.

By buying shares at a price the company argues represents its true market value, CAB keeps shareholders from selling for less and driving down the overall value of the shares.

Williams asserts the intervention is necessary given what little trading actually occurs on BISX and the resulting lack of liquidity. That reality could conceivably force shareholders to offload stock at rock bottom prices just in order to make a sale. He points specifically to the possibility an investor may need to liquidate assets in order to meet an urgent need for cash.

Analysts across the country continue to call for BISX — and the government that regulates it — to do more to win new listings and to expand the investor pool. Either, or both, moves would step up trading action, making it easier for CAB shareholders to execute quicker, more-equitable sales.

Williams, however, isn't optimistic those changes will come soon. In the meantime, he said, Cable Bahamas will continue to exercise its right to buy back shares. It is, in fact, the only BISX issuer to do so, although FOCOL and Commonwealth Bank have each taken their own stabs at increasing liquidity by splitting their shares.

"We could end use of issuer bids," said Williams, "that's if BISX were given the authority to do something like cross-list with foreign exchanges, not just introducing more equities but also stocks and bonds.

"Still, that's not something that can be done overnight, and so it's likely we'll continue our campaign in order to protect shareholders capital gains — that's only with continuing board approval, of course."