AMSTERDAM: Royal Dutch Shell commenced up to $1.5 billion of share buybacks, being the first tranche of the $7 billion shareholder distributions from the sale of the company’s Permian business in the United States.
The form and timing for distributing the remaining $5.5 billion (together with any unpurchased amount of the $1.5 billion of shares under this tranche) will be announced in early 2022.
These distributions are in addition to our shareholder distributions in the range of 20-30% of cash flow from operations.
The company has entered into an irrevocable, non-discretionary arrangement with a broker to enable the purchase of A ordinary shares and/or B ordinary shares for a period up to and including January 28, 2022.
The aggregate maximum consideration for the purchase of A ordinary shares and/or B ordinary shares is $1.5 billion. All shares repurchased as part of this arrangement will be cancelled.
The maximum number of ordinary shares which may be purchased by the company under this arrangement is 687,166,438, which is the maximum pursuant to the authority granted by shareholders at the company’s 2021 Annual General Meeting, less the number of ordinary shares that were repurchased by the company pursuant to the share buyback programme announced on July 29, 20211.
The shares bought back under this arrangement will be whichever of the A ordinary shares and/or B ordinary shares traded in the GBP denomination is economically the least expensive on a given trading day.
The broker will make its trading decisions in relation to the company’s securities independently of the company. The share buybacks will be carried out on the London Stock Exchange and/or on BATS and/or on Chi-X and will be effected within certain pre-set parameters.
The existing shareholder authority to buy back shares granted at the company’s 2021 Annual General Meeting expires at the earlier of the close of business on August 18, 2022, and the end of the date of the company’s 2022 Annual General Meeting. The company expects to seek renewal of shareholder authority to buy back shares at subsequent Annual General Meetings.
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