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Shanghai / AFP
Japanese telecom giant Softbank said on Monday it will buy back about 14 percent of its shares for more than $4.0 billion, after the stock plunged since the start of the year.
The company plans to buy 167 million shares over one year starting Tuesday at a total cost of around 500 billion yen ($4.4 billion), it said.
“The proposed share repurchase will be funded through proceeds from the sale of assets and cash on hand, but not through any debt procurement,” the company said.
The buyback — which tends to beef up a stock’s value — comes after SoftBank’s Tokyo-listed shares dropped 28 percent since the start of the year amid wild volatility on global markets.
Last week, the company — which owns a huge stable of firms including US-based mobile giant Sprint — said its nine-month net profit was down by more than one-quarter from a year earlier.
The shares closed at 4,400 yen on Monday, rising nearly six percent on the back of a huge rally in Tokyo.
In August, Softbank president and former Google executive Nikesh Arora said he would buy a whopping $483 million in company shares to show confidence in SoftBank’s prospects.