Last year Samsung announced that it was launching a $10 billion program to buyback its own shares. The program was going to be implemented in stages and Samsung said that it would be completed in one year. Samsung embarked on the fourth and final phase of this buyback program two months ago in which it was to purchase and cancel 990,000 common and 230,000 preferred shares. It has already repurchased 5.63 million common and 2.09 million preferred shares and canceled them in the previous stages.
Samsung has confirmed that its $10 billion share buyback program has now been completed, adding that the program has contributed to an increase of almost 20 percent in its stock price over the past year, the company's stock price has been setting new record highs this year. We've already discussed Samsung's $10 billion share buyback program in detail in a separate post. A buyback program is just one of the ways a publicly listed company can return money to its shareholders. It basically pays them cash to purchase their equity which it can either keep as treasury stock or choose to retire those shares. Samsung has canceled all of the shares it has purchased as part of this buyback program.
