MADRID, 1 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Starting next Monday, March 4, BBVA will launch a new share repurchase plan worth 781 million euros after receiving the relevant authorization from the European Central Bank (ECB), the entity reported this Friday.
This program is part of the ordinary shareholder remuneration corresponding to the 2023 financial year. In total, BBVA will dedicate 4,010 million euros (50% of the attributable profit of the last year) to the remuneration of its shareholders, between the dividend and this share repurchase .
The shares acquired within the framework of this buyback program will be used to reduce the share capital through amortization.
The maximum number of shares that BBVA can acquire is 557,285,609. The buyback program will end, at the latest, on February 8, 2025 and, in any case, when the maximum monetary amount is reached or the maximum number of shares established is acquired.
The bank has specified that Citigroup will be in charge of executing the buyback on the Spanish Continuous Market and on the Cboe Europe and Turquoise Europe trading platforms, in which the entity has set a daily objective of buying 1,875,000, 1,000,000 and 175,000 shares, respectively.
This is the second share repurchase included in the ordinary shareholder remuneration that the entity has carried out in the last two years.
Thus, on April 21, BBVA concluded a buyback for an amount of 422 million euros, in which it acquired approximately 1.07% of the share capital, which was considered ordinary remuneration to the shareholder corresponding to the year 2022.
In addition, the bank has executed two other share repurchase programs considered as extraordinary shareholder remuneration, in addition to the bank’s dividend distribution.
Specifically, in August 2022, BBVA completed a share buyback framework program for an amount of 3,160 million euros, one of the largest in Europe. Subsequently, in November 2023, another extraordinary share buyback program worth €1 billion was successfully concluded.
In total, if the repurchase programs already carried out are added to the one that begins next Monday, BBVA will have repurchased approximately 14% of its total shares in the last three years.
The entity announced this new buyback program of 781 million euros on January 30, when presenting its 2023 income statement, a year in which it obtained a record net profit of 8,019 million euros, 22.3% more than in 2022 in current euros and excluding extraordinary impacts.
