Late Friday Sears Holdings (SHLD) announced that its board has authorized a $500 million stock buyback program. You may recall the company did the same thing exactly a month ago on September 14th. In today's press release, Sears said they have bought back $434 million of that inital amount in the last month, at an average price of $118.86 per share.

This announcement brings the total amount of the buyback to $1 billion, or roughly 5% of the company's outstanding shares, and could be completed within 60 days, start to finish. Based on these numbers, earnings per share for Sears in 2006 will be increased by nearly $0.40 per share.

Amazingly, the stock still goes down pretty much every day, and trades below the prices Sears has been paying recently. Investors won't be able to come back a year or two from now and say they didn't have a great chance to get in, that's for sure.