April 2, 2024
Today at
18:38
The industrial conglomerate Tessenderlo is moving up a gear with the purchase of its own shares. The company is launching a new purchasing program worth 69 million euros.
‘Since the share is listed below its book value, and taking into account the liquidity position of the group, the board of directors of Tessenderlo Group
believes that it is appropriate to purchase our own shares,” Tessenderlo said in a press release on Tuesday evening.
The industry group of major shareholder and CEO Luc Tack launched a purchasing program worth 40 million euros last year, but that amount has now largely been consumed. Now the company is moving up a gear, with the purchase of up to 2.3 million of its own shares for a maximum of 69 million euros. Tessenderlo gives itself three years to complete the purchasing program.
It is no coincidence that this announcement comes at a time when the share on the stock exchange has fallen to the lowest level since 2020. The company published sober annual figures last week: on an organic basis, the merged group’s turnover fell by 12 percent, while profits fell to 318.7 million euros, 32 percent less than the 467 million euros in the record year 2022.
Moreover, investor confidence in Tack is at a low level. As a major shareholder, chairman and CEO at Tessenderlo, he is firmly in control, but has been accused for years of not paying attention to the interests of minority shareholders.
Tessenderlo certainly has enough financial breathing space to accelerate its share buybacks: the company will be debt-free in 2024 and will pay out less than half of its net profit to shareholders in the form of a dividend for the 2023 financial year.
Since the share is listed below its book value, the board of directors of Tessenderlo Group is of the opinion that it is appropriate to purchase its own shares.
Tessenderlo Group
Industry group
The repurchased shares can be destroyed ‘if necessary, when deemed useful’, the press release said. Since the integration of the loom maker Picanol – which owned a lot of Tessenderlo shares – into the industry group, Tessenderlo has owned around 21.9 million of its own shares, about a quarter of the total. They will probably be destroyed at the end of this year.
