Another £16m pay out for investors in Mears as firm ends its latest share buyback
Social housing services provider Mears has completed its fifth share buyback exercise in less than two years, returning a further £16m to shareholders.
At the same time the Gloucester-headquartered firm, which employs around 5,400 people mainly in property management and maintenance service roles, launched a further buyback during which it aims to return a further £18m.
Since launching the programme in June 2023, Mears has bought back 23.1m shares at an average price of 317p, representing around 21% of the group’s issued ordinary shares.
As a result, it has returned surplus capital of £73.2m to shareholders.
The latest tranche totalled 4,319,819 ordinary shares at an average price of 371.4p – leading to a total consideration of £16m and representing around 4.8% of the group’s issued share capital at the start of the buyback period.
Directors at Mears, yesterday approved an additional return of surplus capital of up to £18m to shareholders through a new share buyback programme.
The largest provider of repairs and maintenance, and regeneration services across the UK, Mears provides and manages 17,000 homes for local and central government and is also responsible for keeping 750,000 social housing homes in the UK in good repair.
In January it said it expected its 2024 results to be “marginally ahead” of expectations and was “increasingly confident” of outperforming predictions for 2025.
