Toshiba to Spend 700 B. Yen on Share Buyback

June 13, 2018

Tokyo- Toshiba Corp. said Wednesday that it will spend some 700 billion yen to buy back its own outstanding shares as part of an effort to provide returns to stockholders.

The Japanese electronics maker will implement the step "at the earliest possible date," the company said in a statement.

The share buyback will use profits from the sale of the company's flash memory unit.

Toshiba has been facing increasing pressure mainly from overseas investors to boost returns since the company sold the chip unit, Toshiba Memory Corp., for some 2 trillion yen on June 1.

A share buyback has the effect of boosting a company's earnings per share by reducing the number of outstanding shares. A share buyback and dividend payments are two key measures to boost shareholder returns.

Toshiba plans to book a profit of 970 billion yen from the sale of the chip unit in the year ending in March 2019. The sale is expected to make some 1.1 trillion yen available for dividends.

The size of the share buyback was determined by considering factors such as the risk of losses in its liquefied natural gas business in the United States, Toshiba said.

The company indicated that the share buyback may be carried out over several years to ease the impact of a significant decrease in the number of outstanding shares. Jiji Press