The Board of Management of speciality chemicals company LANXESS decided to make use of the authorisation granted by the Stockholders’ Meeting on May 20, 2016 and to acquire own shares of up to EUR 200 million (excluding incidental costs) via the stock exchange. On the basis of the current share price (status: January 9, 2019), this would amount to around 4.9 per cent of the share capital and would correspond to a number of approximately 4.5 million own shares.
The share buy-back started on January 14, 2019 at the earliest and shall be completed on December 31, 2019 at the latest. The acquired shares shall be redeemed. “With the share buy-back we are creating value for our shareholders in the currently challenging capital market,†said Michael Pontzen, Chief Financial Officer of LANXESS AG.
In addition, LANXESS has increased its German pension assets by EUR 200 million. At the end of the third quarter of 2018, the pension provisions of LANXESS amounted to EUR 1.247 billion, which are now reduced accordingly. As a result, the group-wide funding status of pension obligations increases from around 49 percent to approximately 58 percent.
"The company pension scheme is an integral part of our corporate philosophy. By strengthening our pension assets, we are now making a significant contribution to securing their future," said Pontzen. The contributions for both transactions come out of the proceeds from the sale of the remaining 50 percent interest in the rubber company ARLANXEO to Saudi Aramco, which brought LANXESS around EUR 1.4 billion.
LANXESS is a leading speciality chemicals company with sales of EUR 9.7 billion in 2017. The company currently has about 15,500 employees in 33 countries and is represented at 59 production sites worldwide. The core business of LANXESS is the development, manufacturing and marketing of chemical intermediates, additives, specialty chemicals and plastics. LANXESS is listed in the leading sustainability indices Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI World and Europe) and FTSE4Good.