Infosys shares gain over 2% after IT giant announces its largest buyback of ₹18,000 crore

Shares of Infosys Ltd., the Bengaluru-based technology services provider gained over 2% in early trading on Friday, September 12, after the company announced a share buyback after market closing hours on Thursday.

Infosys announced that it will be repurchasing 10 crore shares of the company from shareholders via the tender offer route. That amounts to 2.19% of the total equity of Infosys.

Price for the buyback has been fixed as ₹1,800 per share, which is a 19% premium to Thursday's closing price for Infosys. The company will be spending a sum of ₹18,000 crore for the buyback, which is the largest that it has announced since it has been doing buybacks.

This is the fifth share buyback that Infosys has announced in the last eight years, with the last one being in 2022. The board has also constituted a buyback committee to decide on the other aspects of the buyback.

What is also different is that this will be via the tender offer route, as its previous three buybacks were done from the open market. Regulatory changes meant that companies can no longer do open market buybacks starting April 1 this year.

A tender offer buyback means that the company buys back shares at a fixed price from shareholders, which generally is at a premium to the current market price.

The US-listed shares of Infosys (ADRs) ended 0.5% higher overnight. The Indian entity had ended 1.5% lower on Thursday, having rallied nearly 7% in the previous two trading sessions since the buyback consideration was announced.

Infosys has also informed the exchanges on Friday that it has received exemptive relief from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, on certain aspects of the tender offer procedures. The exemption has been granted as there are conflicting regulatory requirements between Indian and US laws for tender offer buybacks.

Brokerage firm CLSA believes that following Infosys, TCS could also announce a buyback of shares in the third quarter of the current financial year, instead of paying a large, special dividend to its shareholders.

Also Read: Why share buybacks aren't as common in India anymore