Infosys Technologies on Saturday announced that its board had approved the Rs 13,000-crore plan under which the company would buy back fully paid-up equity shares at Rs 1,150 apiece.
In a filing to the BSE, India’s second-largest information technology (IT) services company said: “The buyback offer size is 20.51 per cent of the total paid-up equity capital... The buyback offer will comprise a purchase of up to 113,043,478 equity shares aggregating up to 4.92 per cent of the paid-up equity share capital of the company at a price of Rs 1,150 per equity share.”
The Infosys board has also set up a buyback committee comprising Co-chairman Ravi Venkatesan, Executive Vice-Chairman Vishal Sikka, Interim CEO & MD U B Pravin Rao, CFO M D Ranganath, Deputy CFO Jayesh Sanghrajka, Inderpreet Sawhney and Company Secretary A G S Manikantha.
With the country’s IT services sector seeing a single-digit growth rate, for the first time in a decade, on account of automation and a shift to digital technology, Infosys’ peers TCS, Wipro and HCL Technologies have already announced their respective share buyback plans. IT stocks across the industry have yielded sluggish returns during the past year.
Infosys had in April proposed that it would pay up to Rs 13,000 crore to buy back equity shares. The Bengaluru-based IT services major had reported cash and cash equivalents and investments worth Rs 39,335 crore on its balance sheet as on June 30, 2017, and proposed its first share buyback.