Green light to BBVA's new €1 billion share buyback
BBVA is to start today, Monday, Oct. 2, 2023, the execution of a new share buyback program for €1 billion, following the authorization from the European Central Bank (ECB). This buyback has the consideration of extraordinary shareholder distribution, and is in addition to BBVA’s dividend distributions.
BBVA’s solid capital position (with a fully-loaded CET1 ratio of 12.99 percent as of June 2023) prompted the bank to announce on July 28, 2023, its intention to proceed with a new share buyback program for €1 billion, in line with its commitment to maintaining attractive shareholder distributions.
This buyback program has the consideration of extraordinary distribution, that is, being additional to the regular dividend distributions. The policy establishes a payout (to shareholders) of between 40 and 50 percent of BBVA’s earnings, including cash dividends and possible additional share buybacks.
Since 2021, BBVA has distributed €8.2 billion in dividends and share buybacks to shareholders. When adding this to the interim dividend against 2023 earnings recently announced and this extraordinary share buyback, the total amount will increase to close to €10.2 billion.
BBVA is firmly committed to creating value for its shareholders. Since January 2021 and to date, total profitability for BBVA shareholders¹ has increased by 121 percent (including stock performance and dividends), well above the average of its European (73 percent) and Spanish (75 percent) peers.
The share buyback program will be implemented through the acquisition of three million shares per day, until completing the target of €1 billion. Specifically, BBVA will execute the repurchase of shares in the Spanish Continuous Market and the DXE Europe, where the bank is setting a daily target to purchase 2.5 million and 500,000 shares, respectively. BBVA already used this method in its previous share buyback.
This is the second extraordinary share buyback implemented by the bank over the past two years. On August 19, 2022, BBVA completed a share buyback program for €3.16 billion, one the largest in Europe. In said repurchase, the bank acquired a total of 637,770,016 shares, representing 9.6 percent of the capital at the time. Furthermore, BBVA completed on April 21, 2023, a share buyback for €422 million, acquiring 64.64 million shares, approximately 1.07 percent of BBVA’s social capital, as part of the execution of its distribution policy with the consideration of ordinary shareholder distribution against 2022 earnings.