Singapore Bourse listed Companies Buy Back Shares Worth $169.85 Million in Q1-2024

Two companies listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) – are among the 50 such entities which have bought back shares worth $169.85 million by way of market acquisitions in the first quarter of this year.

The two listed companies – CapitaLand Investment and City Developments – led the primary-listed buyback consideration tally in Q1 of 2024. While CapitaLand Investment bought back 31.2 million shares at an average price of S$2.96, City Developments bought back 6.7 million shares at an average price of S$5.91 per share.

Other Strait Times Index (STI) stocks that conducted buybacks in the first quarter included Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), Venture Corporation, SGX, Singapore Technologies Engineering and Singapore Airlines.

The total buy back of shares represents 0.04% of the total market capitalisation of all primary-listed stocks on SGX as of the 31 March 2024. Share buybacks by way of market acquisitions are ‘on-market’, that is the company buys the shares from any willing seller at prevailing market value.

Over the quarter, the STI generated a flat total return. While the broad Singapore stock market booked S$1.15 billion of net institutional outflow, for every stock that booked net institutional outflow, close to one stock booked net institutional inflow.

Together, the banking sector and the S-REIT sector contributed $556.4 million of the net institutional outflow. The flat STI total return also saw $71.01 million in net inflows to both STI tracking Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), the SPDR STI ETF (ES3) and NikkoAM STI ETF (G3B). March also marked the seventh consecutive month of the STI ETFs booking combined net inflows.

According to the SGX Stock Screener, CapitalLand Investment, the global real estate investment manager with a strong Asia presence, maintains a Refinitiv consensus estimates target price of $2.75.

City Developments, the global property and hotel conglomerate maintains a Refinitiv consensus estimates target price of $5.59, according to SGX Stock Screener. The company also completed the buyback of the maximum allowable amount of ‘Preference Shares’ in December 2023.

The Group said that with the cancellation of the purchased Preference Shares, the Group was able to reduce the finance cost pertaining to the coupon payment obligation for these shares.

Buyback Activity Up

The buyback activity in Q1 of 2024 is higher compared with 41 primary-listed companies conducting S$111 million in buyback consideration during the same period last year.

For the full 2023, 69 SGX primary-listed companies bought back shares by way of market acquisitions with a consideration totalling $543.96 million. Motivations for share buybacks can include employee compensation plans (such as share option schemes or employee share purchase plans) or long-term capital management.

Yangzijiang Financial Holding (YFH), another SGX-listed company, bought back 84.5 million shares in Q1 of this year. This brought YFH’s buybacks on the current mandate to 4.37% of its issued shares (excluding treasury shares), as the 21 April 2023 share buyback mandate date.

These buybacks were conducted between 11 May 2023 and 28 March 2024. The preceding mandate saw YFH buy back 7% of its issued shares (excluding treasury shares).

The asset manager and investment arm of Yangzijiang Shipbuilding (Holdings) considers its share buybacks an effective method of returning value to shareholders and will continue doing so when circumstances permit.

YFH also said that the factors that it considered during the share buybacks included the amount of surplus cash available, its share price level, and prevailing market conditions.