@loshell good point. It explains why they stopped, but doesn't fully explain why they resumed at the higher level. (i.e., necessary but not sufficient). I think? (at >$1.60, vs. <$1.50 before). I'm just getting my eye in, because what will be more interesting is if they have a reasonable result, the SP steps a little more (not a lot), and then they stop and start again.

Or am I missing the point?

After a quick bit of spelunking... (and I'm interested as I procrastinated when it was under $1.40 and then missed the chance to buy in at under $1.50 and now waiting a bit to see if it falls back to sub $1.50...)

So on June 30th the max price they could pay was reported as $1.535 and they stop issuing buy back notices, so perhaps an unofficial blackout period leading up to results release on Jul 11? SP closed at $1.38 on Jul 10 which would have been a drag on VWAP. On their next buy back notice of Aug 4 it reports a max buy price of $1.70.

There was fleeting above average trade volume in the 2-3 days post results announcement but the volume really dropped off once price got above $1.60ish. I'm not motivated enough to actually calculate the 5-day sliding window VWAP over the Jul/Aug period and surprisingly, there doesn't appear to be a freely available VWAP calculator online that isn't behind an annoying "give us your details" front end.

You're right though, it seems there's a period later in July where the VWAP likely caught up to the SP and they could have resumed the buy back but delayed until Aug 4, maybe after taking a short watch and wait approach to see the downwards SP trend resume?

Another factor is that when you buy back you are constrained by the volumes in the market, as the idea is to buy back without yourself moving the price on the day. The idea is that the SP will move up over the longer term vaauations on the $/sh are incrementally ramped up, due to declining SOI. Movements on the day are generally completely disconnect from the fundamentals, particularly for small cap, less liquid stocks, but also even for large caps particualry when funds are moving large volumes.

I couldn't quite let this go, so I hacked up a basic GSheet VWAP calculator which folks are free to clone and play with if it's of interest/use.

I didn't manage to find an official ASX-specified SP VWAP formula so implemented the calculation described here which looked plausible and can be calculated using the data available from the GOOGLEFINANCE() function.

The numbers showing up in the last column "5-day SP VWAP +5%" match the prices (to within a few deci-cents) I've spot checked in some RUL buy back notifications near the end of the notification under the heading "4.7 Highest price allowed to be paid by entity on the previous day under listing rule 7.33:" so the calculation seems to be close enough even though it's not the official methodology.

Screenshot of spreadsheet results for RUL 5-day SP VWAP over the period 2023-06-25 to 2023-08-10 reproduced below:

Comparing the "Day Avg SP" against the "5-day SP VWAP +5%" suggests there were indeed many days between July 11 and Aug 3 where they could have bought back shares but did not, for reasons currently unknown.

@loshell - gotta love fact-based analysis!

My current hypothesis is they are being careful not to move the short term SP against their own buying. e.g., yesterday only 31,620 vs. 90k not being unusual on prior days.