We study the motivations of share repurchase by examining the combined effect of signaling costs and earnings timeliness on long term performance after share repurchase using share repurchases in Korea, where firms can repurchase shares in the open market either directly or indirectly through a financial service firm. The direct open market share repurchase where the share repurchase must be completed exactly as announced within a tight timeframe incurs a higher information disclosure cost compared to the far more discretionary indirect open market share repurchase. We find that the direct open market share repurchase achieves a higher long term performance than the indirect open market share repurchase suggesting that the signaling motivation of share repurchase increases with the signaling costs. There is a positive (negative) interaction effect of indirect share repurchase method and earnings (un)timeliness on long-term performance suggesting that managerial opportunism is an important motivation for share repurchase with low signaling costs and low earnings timeliness.