NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Qiagen will repurchase the euro equivalent of up to $10 million of its shares starting Oct. 1 as part of the company's first share repurchase program, it said late on Friday.
The first tranche of the $100 million repurchase program will last until Nov. 5. Shares will be repurchased on the electronic trading platform of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange exclusively, and the first tranche will be limited to the buyback of a maximum of 570,000 shares. The company added that the maximum share price during the first tranche will not exceed by more than 10 percent the euro equivalent of the average closing price of the last five trading days prior to the day of purchase on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
The purpose of the repurchase is to "hold the shares in treasury in order to satisfy obligations from exchangeable debt instruments and/or employee share-based remuneration plans," Qiagen said.
The firm announced the buyback program in July concurrent with the release of its second-quarter earnings results. Qiagen said at the time that the program would end Dec. 27, 2013.
Additional tranches of the program will be decided and announced separately.