Huntsman Corporation announced that the company's newly elected board of directors has authorized a doubling of its existing share repurchase program from $1 billion to $2 billion. 

 

As of December 31st, 2021, the Company had already repurchased $102 million of shares under the original program. The additional $1 billion of authorized repurchases, or $1.9 billion in the aggregate, reflects approximately 25% of Huntsman's market capitalization as of March 25, 2022. Huntsman had $2.5 billion in liquidity and a net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio of 0.4x at the end 2021.

 

Share repurchases under the $2 billion authorization may be made on the open market, under one or more Rule 10b-5-1 trading plans or via one or more accelerated share repurchase (ASR) agreements. The timing, volume and nature of the share repurchases will be at the discretion of management, and dependent upon market conditions, applicable securities laws, and other factors and may be suspended or discontinued at any time. 

 

Peter Huntsman, Chairman, President and CEO commented, "As a result of the many discussions we had with our shareholders over the past few months, supported by strong guidance from our newly refreshed board of directors, I am delighted to announce a substantial increase to our share repurchase program. Based upon current market conditions, we intend to repurchase approximately $1 billion of the now remaining $1.9 billion in stock in 2022. We have one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry, as evidenced by our recent upgrade by Fitch, and we will maintain our investment grade credit rating while deploying cash appropriately to shareholders. We look forward to updating the market on our first quarter operational performance as well as our share repurchase activity on April 29, 2022."