Omnicare Boosts Dividend 43%, Authorizes Addl. $500 Mln Share Buyback

(RTTNews) - Healthcare services company Omnicare, Inc. (OCR) said Thursday that its board has declared a hefty 43 percent increase in its regular quarterly cash dividend, and also authorized an additional share repurchase program. The move reflects the company's continued focus on returning capital to shareholders.

"Returning capital to stockholders is an important element of our capital allocation strategy. With these substantial increases to both our share repurchase program and quarterly cash dividend, we are better positioned to redeploy our cash flows to the benefit of our stockholders," CEO John Workman said in a statement.

The Cincinnati, Ohio-based Fortune 500 company's board raised its regular quarterly dividend on its common stock by 43 percent to $0.20 per share from $0.14 per share, and is payable on December 24 to shareholders of record as on December 16, 2013.

The company had previously increased the quarterly cash dividend by 100 percent to $0.14 per share in September 2012, and by 75 percent to $0.07 per share in February 2012.

Further, the company also said the board has authorized an additional $500 million share repurchase program.

The company noted that the share buyback will take place from time to time through December 31, 2015.

Omnicare has repurchased 4.2 million shares for an aggregate purchase price of $220 million year-to-date.

The company had last announced a $250 million accelerated share repurchase program in November 2012. Prior to that, it authorized an additional $350 million in share repurchases in September 2012 and an additional $200 million of share repurchases in February 2012.

In Thursday's regular trading session, OCR is currently trading at $58.53, up $0.98 or 1.70% on a volume of 0.19 million shares.