In the fifth paragraph of a press release announcing a bond offering, Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) yesterday announced that it has increased its share buyback authorization by $5 billion.
In the third quarter of this year, Yahoo! repurchased $1.7 billion worth of its common stock, bringing to total repurchase amount through the first nine months of 2013 to $3.1 billion. Yahoo! has watched its share price rise by almost 80% year to date.
Since Nov. 1, 2011, the company seen total shares outstanding decline by almost 15%, as shown in the chart below:
YHOO Shares Outstanding data by YCharts.
Yahoo! gave no time table for how long the authorization would be in place, or at what price it would or would not repurchase those shares. The company presently has approximately 1 billion shares outstanding; all things being equal, at today's price of approximately $35.75 per share, the company would watch its total shares outstanding fall by roughly 14% with $5 billion in repurchases.
With the $1.7 billion in repurchases in the third quarter, Yahoo! had approximately $200 million remaining on a $5 billion buyback authorization dating to 2012.
