Total share buyback value down to $344m

Shares worth $22.6m were bought back by their companies in October.

There were a total of 8,313,369 shares repurchased by 15 companies, with a total consideration of $22.6m in October, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) revealed.

According to SGX data, buybacks in October 2017 have taken the total share buyback consideration for the first 10 months of 2017 to $344m. This compares with $778m for the first ten months of 2016.

The five stocks with the largest buyback consideration value last month were OCBC, Yanlord Land Group (Yanlord Land), SIA Engineering, ST Engineering, and Singapore Post (SingPost) which made up more than 90% of the total consideration.

For an eighth consecutive month, OCBC maintained the highest buyback consideration in the month, taking the total number of shares to date purchased on its 12-month mandate to 13.56 million.

Share buyback transactions involve share issuers repurchasing some of their outstanding shares from shareholders through the open market. Once the shares are bought back, they will be converted into treasury shares, which means they are no longer categorised as shares outstanding. Other motivations for share buybacks include companies moving to align stock valuations with balance sheet objectives.