Chart of the Day: October buyback shares hit $22m

Total buyback shares have reached $746m for first 10 months of 2020.

This chart from SGX shows that 28 primary-listed Singapore stocks bought back shares for a total consideration of $22m in October, less than the $43m in consideration for September, but higher than the $15m buyback consideration reported in October 2019.

This has brought the total consideration of share buybacks for SGX primary-listed stocks to $746m for the first 10 months of 2020, up from $590 million in consideration for the entire calendar year of 2019.

The $746m represents 0.09% of the combined $788b in market capitalisation of all stocks listed on SGX at end-October.

The October buyback consideration coincided with the 1.7% price decline in the Straits Times Index (STI) from 2,466.62 to 2,423.84 over the month.

Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, ST Engineering and Sembcorp Industries were amongst the five stocks with the highest buyback consideration in October. As many as seven companies commenced new mandates, including Sembcorp Industries and OUE.