Submitted by Mark Hanna
Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.
Interesting timing here…
Within an hour of a Fed announcement, JPMorgan (JPM) comes out of the blue with a $15B stock buyback (and 5 cent dividend increase). Some days you think this is all orchestrated…
The share buyback is more of a headline grabber as it seems much of it will simply be to offset employee grants – but it got the market revved up.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM – News) today announced the following actions taken by its Board of Directors:
- Declared a quarterly dividend of $0.30 per share on the corporation’s common stock, an increase of $0.05 per share. The dividend is payable on April 30, 2012 to stockholders of record at the close of business on April 5, 2012
- Authorized a new $15 billion equity repurchase program, of which up to $12 billion is approved for 2012 and up to an additional $3 billion is approved through the end of the first quarter of 2013
Remarking on the dividend action and repurchase authorization, Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, said, “We are pleased to be in a position to increase our dividend and to establish a new equity repurchase program. We expect to generate significant capital and deploy that capital to the benefit of our shareholders. JPMorgan Chase continues to invest in our substantial organic growth opportunities as our top priority and best use of capital. We expect to repurchase, at a minimum, approximately the same amount of shares that we issue for employee stock-based incentive awards. Beyond this, we intend to repurchase equity only when we are generating capital in excess of what we need to fund our organic growth and when we think it provides excellent value to our existing shareholders.”
Disclosure Notice
Any securities mentioned on this page are not held by the author in his personal portfolio. Securities mentioned may or may not be held by the author in the mutual fund he manages, the Paladin Long Short Fund (PALFX). For a list of the aforementioned fund’s holdings at the end of the prior quarter, visit the Paladin Funds website at http://www.paladinfunds.com/holdings/blog
