Oh in that case your numbers for the long-term investors in the buyback situation don't make sense. Their stock may be worth on an individual share basis, but their holdings are unchanged in value at best and usually worth less, because the company expended money in buying back the shares.

In most cases in the past decades, buybacks were accomplished using loans rather than profits, leaving the companies in worse financial positions. More than half of the companies that engaged in buybacks in the past decades are either bankrupt, declared bankruptcy in 2020, or are underperforming the market. Only a handful of companies that engaged in buybacks are doing okay, and those companies also issued dividends (see for example, Microsoft).