As announced in the interim results published yesterday, the board of Foxtons Group plc has confirmed the launch of a £3m share buyback in line with the company’s policy of returning excess cash to shareholders. The proposed share buyback will be funded from accumulated cash resources.
The company has appointed its broker Numis Securities Limited to manage the share buyback programme to repurchase ordinary shares on its behalf, up to a maximum aggregate consideration of £3m and subject to certain other set parameters.
The buyback programme is in accordance with Foxtons’ general authority to purchase ordinary shares granted by its shareholders at the AGM held on 22 April 2021.
The share buyback programme will also be effected within the parameters of the Market Abuse Regulation 596/2014/EU and the Commission Delegated Regulation 2016/1052/EU (as in force in the UK from time to time, including where relevant pursuant to the Market Abuse (Amendment)(EU Exit) Regulations 2019).
Share purchases will take place in open market transactions and may be made from time to time depending on market conditions, share price and trading volume. The maximum price paid per Ordinary Share will be no more than the higher of (i) 105% of the average middle market closing prices of the Ordinary Shares for the five business days preceding any Ordinary Shares being purchased and (ii) the higher of the price of the last independent trade and the highest independent bid for Ordinary Shares on the trading venue where the purchase is carried out. Under the buyback, the purchased shares will be held in treasury.
Due to the limited liquidity in the issued Ordinary Shares, a buyback of Ordinary Shares pursuant to the buyback programme on any given trading day may represent a significant proportion of the daily trading volume in the Ordinary Shares on the London Stock Exchange and may exceed 25% of the average daily trading volume and, accordingly, the Company may not benefit from the exemption contained in Article 5(1) of Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014.
Nic Budden, Foxtons CEO, said: “I am delighted to be reporting a strong first half performance which has seen growth across all our business areas and allows us to re-instate the dividend and further our share buyback programme.”
The reality is they are only returning part of the £22m (gross of fees) back to shareholders they raised in April 2020 as a safeguard against the pandemic in April 2020
This is the 2nd time they have ventured in the market to do this having dived in to buy back £3m worth of shares in December
Spent £14.25m on the purchase of Douglas & Gordon and a very questionable £3m investment in Boomin.
This has mopped up all of that capital raise + all the furlough monies which they failed to pay back
Budden was notably silent yesterday whether they had received any leads from Boomin after their heavy investment. I guess if they had Boomin ‘s PR department would be all over it like a rash
Should imagine they will have a realatively easy time filling their boots buying shares back in without causing too much of a stir on the SP .
The worry is that major investor Hoskings might use it as an opportunity to dump some more shares having sold 0.5% earlier this month
“I am delighted to be reporting a strong first half performance which has seen growth across all our business areas ”
I am sure some of the major shareholders will be non plussed about performance and will have something to say in due course
They have seen the chair Barlow off the premises.I doubt it will stop there.
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