Infosys promoters, which include Narayana Murthy and chairman Nandan Nilekani, will not participate in the share buyback process announced in September, the company said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.
India’s second-largest IT services company announced its plan to buy back Rs 18,000 crore worth of shares — its largest in a decade — at a time when technology stocks have been under pressure due to a weak macroeconomic environment and uncertainties arising from tariffs.
“Since the promoters and the promoter group of the company have declared their intention to not participate in the buyback, equity shares held by them have not been considered for the purposes of computing the entitlement ratio,” according to the filing.
The promoters and promoter group, which also include their family members, hold 13.05 per cent, or 542 million outstanding shares of the company, as on the date of the announcement and at the end of the second quarter on September 30.
Narayana Murthy holds 0.36 per cent and Nilekani 0.98 per cent, while Sudha Gopalakrishnan, wife of co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, is the single largest promoter shareholder with 2.3 per cent.
The Bengaluru-based company will buy back 100 million shares at an average price of Rs 1,800 per share. That represents 2.41 per cent of the total number of equity shares in the existing total paid-up equity share capital of the company, the country’s second-largest IT services provider said.
“Effective from financial year 2025, the company expects to continue its policy of returning approximately 85 per cent of the free cash flow cumulatively over a five-year period through a combination of semi-annual dividends and/or share buyback or special dividends, subject to applicable laws and requisite approvals,” the filing added.
This is the fifth buyback by the company in the last decade. The last one was in 2022 — an open-market purchase — where its buyback totalled Rs 9,300 crore at an average price of Rs 1,850 per share. At that time, it had bought back 60 million shares.
