Colruyt profits from share price fall, buys own stock

Last week, Colruyt Group went through the worst week ever on the stock exchange, but the Belgian retailer now rises to the occasion and buys back its own shares for half a million euros.

Opportunism

Last week the shares lost more than 15 % in worth and the loss over the past few months is even 22 %. The main reason is that, despite decent financial results, the company was very cautious with its predictions. Analysts also felt discontent with the drop in operational profit and the rise in competition in Belgium, especially now Jumbo makes its expansion plans more concrete.

The company saw opportunities in these challenges and bought 11,000 of its own shares. At an average price of 52.36 euros, the total price of this operation was just over 575,000 euros. Belgian financial newspaper De Tijd remarks that the retailer has a habit of buying more of its own shares when the time (and price) is right and then retiring them: the number of shares has dropped by 18 % since 2012. This raises the dividend per share: profit per share grew by 22 %, despite company profit remaining stable.