FILE PHOTO: A visitor uses a Samsung Electronics' flagship smartphone Galaxy S24 during its unveiling ceremony in Seoul, South Korea, January 15, 2024. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo
SEOUL (Reuters) -Samsung Electronics has decided to buy back shares worth 10 trillion won ($7.17 billion) over a one-year period to boost shareholder value, after shares plunged to more than four-year lows earlier in the week.
It is the first time Samsung Electronics has decided to buy back shares since 2017.
Of the total, three trillion won worth of shares, or 50.14 million common shares and 6.91 million preferred shares, will be repurchased in the next three months and cancelled, Samsung said after the market closed on Friday.
The board of directors will decide on ways to enhance shareholder value, including when and how to use the remaining seven trillion in the repurchase programme, it said in a statement.
In the short term, the decision would likely help Samsung's share performance, but the company needs concrete business plans to better support its share performance, analysts said.
The world's top memory chip maker last month apologised for a disappointing quarterly profit, as it lagged rivals in supplying artificial intelligence chips to Nvidia. Samsung was the worst performing stock among major global chipmakers, also hurt by President-elect Donald Trump's threat to levy tariffs on imports that would hit demand for electronics products.
"It is a reflection that Samsung feels a sense of crisis due to the sharp stock drops," said Park Ju-gun, head of corporate analysis firm Leaders Index.
Park said the share buyback may intend to bolster depressed stock prices for Samsung shareholders including Chairman Jay Y. Lee's family members, who have put up some of their Samsung stocks as collateral to help pay inheritance taxes, as recent plunges threaten to trigger a margin call - a request for more collateral from banks for Lee's mother and his two sisters.
Shares of Samsung Electronics rose 7.2% on Friday, their biggest daily jump since March 2020 and rebounding from their lowest level since mid-June 2020. They were still down 32% year-to-date.
($1 = 1,395.3100 won)
(Reporting by Jihoon Lee, Hyunjoo Jin and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Kirsten Donovan and David Evans)
