ABB To Unveil Up To $4.3 Bln Follow-up Share Buyback Program

(RTTNews) - Swiss engineering company ABB Ltd.(ANN.L, ABB) Thursday said it will launch its previously announced follow-up share buyback program of up to $4.3 billion on April 9 until March 23, 2022.

The program represents a maximum of around 137 million shares based on the current share price. The maximum number of shares that may be repurchased under the new program on any given trading day is 1.54 million shares.

The follow-up share buyback program is for capital reduction purposes. It is part of ABB's plan to return $7.8 billion of cash proceeds from the Power Grids divestment to shareholders and is consistent with the company's capital structure optimization program.

Under the initial program, ABB repurchased a total of 128.62 million shares - equivalent to 5.93 percent of its issued share capital at the launch of the program - for a total amount of approximately $3.5 billion.

ABB shareholders approved the cancellation of 115 million of these shares at ABB's 2021 Annual General Meeting.

The total number of ABB's issued shares is around 2.17 billion including the shares approved for cancellation at ABB's 2021 AGM. ABB currently owns 143.99 million treasury shares.

At the company's AGM on March 24, 2022, ABB intends to request shareholder approval to cancel the shares purchased through this program as well as those shares purchased under the initial program that were not proposed for cancellation at ABB's 2021 AGM.