Consumers electronics company Philips has successfully completed the cancellation of 3.8 million shares, as part of its share repurchase program that was announced early last year.
Under its share buyback strategy, undertaken for capital reduction purposes, Philips plans to buy back some €1.5 billion of shares. In March 2020 Philips announced that it had bought back 50.4% of this figure. Once they are bought back, Philips plans to cancel all of these shares.
Philips will execute more individual forward transactions in 2020, and expects settlement dates to send into the second half of 2021.
In January this year Philips also announced plans to repurchase up to 6 million shares to cover long-term incentive and employee stock purchase plans.
While COVID-19 had a negative impact on overall sales in Q1 2020, led by China and Asia disruptions from late July, the pandemic did drive demand for professional healthcare products and solutions, with order intakes growing by 23% year-on-year.
