Summary
CRH Public Limited Company (CRH) has filed a Form 6-K with the SEC, detailing recent transactions involving its own shares. On July 9, 2008, the company, through UBS Limited, repurchased 166,305 ordinary shares at prices ranging from €15.737 to €16.30 per share. These repurchased shares will be held as treasury shares, a common practice for companies to manage their share capital and potentially return value to shareholders. The company also transferred 13,951 ordinary shares to participants in its employee share schemes on the same day, at varying Euro and Pound Sterling prices.
Key Highlights
- 1CRH repurchased 166,305 ordinary shares on July 9, 2008, through UBS Limited.
- 2The share repurchase occurred at prices between €15.737 and €16.30 per share.
- 3The repurchased shares will be held as treasury shares.
- 4CRH transferred 13,951 ordinary shares to participants in its employee share schemes.
- 5These transfers to employees occurred at prices ranging from €10.63 to €17.99 and £7.18 to £12.38 per share.
- 6Following these transactions, CRH holds 12,808,366 ordinary shares in treasury.
- 7The total number of ordinary shares in issue, excluding treasury shares, stands at 535,312,070.
Frequently Asked Questions
Treasury shares are shares that a company has repurchased from the open market. Holding shares in treasury gives a company flexibility. These shares can be reissued later to fund acquisitions, employee stock options, or to return capital to shareholders. It also means they are not included in the calculation of earnings per share (EPS) or dividends on a per-share basis.
Companies typically repurchase their shares when they believe the stock is undervalued, to offset dilution from employee stock options, or as a way to return excess cash to shareholders, effectively increasing their ownership stake in the company. It can also be a signal of management's confidence in the company's future prospects.
Transferring shares to employee share schemes is a common practice for compensation and to align employee interests with those of shareholders. The varying prices at which these shares were transferred likely reflect different award structures or the timing of the awards within the employee schemes.
The number of shares in issue excluding treasury shares (535,312,070) is the figure that is typically used for calculating key per-share metrics like Earnings Per Share (EPS) and for determining voting power. The treasury shares are not considered outstanding for these purposes.