In a regulatory statement on Wednesday, Infosys said that its promoters, including chairman Nandan Nilekani and founder Narayana Murthy, would not be offering their shares in the September repurchase process.
At a time when equities of such companies have been under pressure owing to a bad macroeconomic environment and uncertainty emerging from tariffs, the second-biggest IT services business in India revealed its intention to buy back ₹18,000 crore shares, its largest in ten years.
According to the filing, “equity shares owned by the promoters and the promoter group of the firm have not been included for purposes of determining the entitlement ratio as they have expressed their desire to not participate in the buyback.”
As of the announcement date and the end of the second quarter on September 30, the promoters and promoter group, which also includes their family members, owned 13.05 percent, or 542 million, of the company’s outstanding shares.
The single-largest promoter shareholder is Sudha Gopalakrishnan, the wife of cofounder Kris Gopalakrishnan, with 2.3% of the company’s shares, followed by Narayana Murthy with 0.36 and Nilekani with 0.98 percent.
At an average price of ₹1,800 per share, the Bengaluru-based business would repurchase 100 million shares. According to the nation’s second-largest supplier of IT services, it amounts to 2.41 percent of the total number of equity shares in the company’s current total paid-up equity share capital.
The filing also stated that, “subject to applicable laws and necessary approvals, the company expects to continue its policy of returning approximately 85% of the free cash flow cumulatively over a 5-year period through a combination of semi-annual dividends and/or share buyback/special dividends, effective from financial year 2025.”
In the last ten years, the corporation has repurchased five times. The most recent was an open market buyback in 2022 that cost ₹9,300 crore at an average price of ₹1,850 per share. It had repurchased 60 million shares at that point.