Tata Sons raked in Rs 11,164 crore by selling 2.48 crore shares of its flagship firm Tata Consultancy (TCS) in a share repurchase programme. Major investor Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) also participated in the buyback of India’s largest software exporter and tendered 11.74 lakh shares to take home Rs 528 crore.

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TCS had announced a buyback worth Rs 18,000 crore at Rs 4,500 per share, which opened on March 9 and closed on March 23.

The share buyback programme of the information technology major saw record participation from investors. A total of 30.10 crore shares were offered by investors, which was almost nine times the offer size of four crore shares.

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Small retail investors holding shares worth up to Rs 2 lakh offered 2.53 crore shares, while general category shares stood at 27.57 crore.

Promoter Tata Sons’ portion made up 62.02 percent of the buyback size. With the buyback, Tata Sons’ stake in its flagship became 72.30 percent against 72.19 percent before the offer. Public shareholding came down from 27.81 percent to 27.7 percent.

According to the regulatory filing by TCS, the company received 977,300 valid applications from small shareholders and another 151,377 applications from all other categories of shareholders.

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TCS has bought back shares worth Rs 66,000 crore since 2017 through four repurchase programmes. Such share buyback programmes improve the company’s return ratios.

The fund inflow into Tata Sons comes at a time when it has invested in Air India and other digital ventures.

In January 2021, TCS bought back shares worth about Rs 16,000 crore. In the January buyback programme, Tata Sons had tendered shares worth Rs 9,997.5 crore.

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Earlier in 2017 and 2018, TCS had conducted two share buyback programmes worth Rs 16,000 crore each. In 2017, TCS bought back the shares at Rs 2,850 apiece, while in 2018 the price was Rs 2,100 per share.

Infosys, which is India's second-largest software exporter, also conducted a Rs 9,200-crore share buyback programme in September last year.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)