OREANDA-NEWS. The Cyprus subsidiary of LUKOIL Lukoil Securities Limited bought back 4.96% of its own shares and depositary receipts totaling $ 3 billion on the exchange, completing the buyback program, the LUKOIL press service said. The buyback program was announced on August 30, 2018, according to the plan, it was supposed to be completed on December 30, 2022, but the company realized it in less than a year, that is, four times faster.

In total, 13.5 million ordinary shares and 23.7 million depositary receipts were purchased (one receipt corresponds to one share) of LUKOIL, the company said. Back in May, the LUKOIL board of directors recommended reducing the size of the company's authorized capital from 750 million to 715 million shares by paying off the repurchased securities.

The day before, on August 19, LUKOIL announced that it had finished accepting applications for the repurchase of shares. During the validity period of the offer, shareholders filed applications for the sale of 82.89 million shares, while earlier it was decided to buy back only 35 million shares. On this news, the company's shares on the Moscow Exchange went up by more than 5%, and capitalization rose to 3.9 trillion rubles.

The buyback program was announced as part of the implementation of the oil company management proposals aimed at increasing its shareholder value. At the end of November 2018, LUKOIL First Vice President Alexander Matytsyn said that the company decided to accelerate and complete the buyback in 2019.

After the buyback program is completed, LUKOIL is ready to announce a new buyback program, Matytsyn said on May 30. According to him, it can be approved before the end of August. According to data from 11:00 Moscow time on August 20, LUKOIL securities on the Moscow Exchange fell 0.1%, capitalization amounted to 3.9 trillion rubles.