TORONTO, Feb. 23, 2018 /CNW/ - Royal Bank of Canada (the Bank) ("RY" on TSX and NYSE) today
announced that the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and the Office of
the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) have approved
its normal course issuer bid to purchase, for cancellation, up to
30,000,000 of its common shares.
The shares that may be repurchased represent approximately 2.1%
of the Bank's outstanding common shares. As of January 31, 2018 there were 1,444,064,647 common
shares of the Bank outstanding. The TSX limits annual normal course
issuer bid purchases to the greater of 5% of the issuer's
outstanding common shares or 10% of the issuer's public float. In
computing our annual limit, we deducted 30,000,000 common shares
purchased under the Bank's previous normal course issuer bid,
pursuant to TSX rules.
Purchases under the normal course issuer bid may commence on
February 27, 2018 and continue until
February 26, 2019, when the bid
expires, or such earlier date as the Bank may complete its
purchases pursuant to the notice of intention filed with the TSX.
Purchases may be made through the TSX, the New York Stock Exchange
(NYSE) and other designated exchanges and alternative Canadian
trading systems. The price paid for any such repurchased shares
will be the prevailing market price at the time of acquisition.
Purchases may also be made through other means permitted by
applicable securities laws, including under specific share
repurchase programs pursuant to issuer bid exemption orders issued
by applicable securities regulatory authorities. Any purchases made
under an exemption order issued by a securities regulatory
authority will generally be at a discount to the prevailing market
price.
The amount of purchases on the TSX on any given day will not
exceed 512,506 common shares, which is 25% of the average daily
trading volume on the TSX for the six months ending January 31, 2018. The average daily trading
volume of the Bank's shares on the TSX for that six-month period,
calculated in accordance with the rules of the TSX for the purposes
of the bid, was 2,050,025 shares.
The normal course issuer bid will give us the flexibility to
manage the Bank's capital position while generating shareholder
value.
The Bank's previous normal course issuer bid for the purchase of
30,000,000 shares commenced on March 14, 2017 and was
completed on January 31, 2018. The
Bank repurchased all 30,000,000 shares under the prior bid on the
open market and pursuant to exemption orders issued by securities
regulatory authorities at a volume weighted average price of
approximately $90.90 per share.
Caution regarding forward-looking statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may be deemed
to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of certain
securities laws, including the "safe harbour" provisions of the
United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of
1995 and any applicable Canadian securities legislation. These
forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to,
statements with respect to the normal course issuer bid by Royal
Bank of Canada and specific share
repurchase program. Forward-looking statements are typically
identified by words such as "believe", "expect", "foresee",
"forecast", "anticipate", "intend", "estimate", "goal", "plan" and
"project" and similar expressions of future or conditional verbs
such as "will", "may", "should", "could" or "would".
By their very nature, forward-looking statements require us to
make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and
uncertainties, which give rise to the possibility that our
predictions, forecasts, projections, expectations or conclusions
will not prove to be accurate, that our assumptions may not be
correct and that our forward-looking statements, including
statements about the proposed normal course issuer bid by Royal
Bank of Canada, will not be
achieved. We caution readers not to place undue reliance on these
statements as a number of risk factors could cause our actual
results to differ materially from the expectations expressed in
such forward-looking statements. These factors – many of which are
beyond our control and the effects of which can be difficult to
predict – include: credit, market, liquidity and funding,
insurance, operational, regulatory compliance, strategic,
reputation, legal and regulatory environment, competitive and
systematic risks and other risks discussed in the risks sections of
our 2017 Annual Report and the Risk management section of our Q1
2018 Report to Shareholders; including global uncertainty and
volatility, elevated Canadian housing prices and household
indebtedness, information technology and cyber risk, including the
risk of cyber-attacks or other information security events at or
impacting our service providers or other third parties with whom we
interact, regulatory change, technological innovation and
non-traditional competitors, global environmental policy and
climate change, changes in consumer behaviour, the end of
quantitative easing, the Brexit vote, the business and economic
conditions in the geographic regions in which we operate, the
effects of changes in government fiscal, monetary and other
policies, tax risk and transparency, and environmental and social
risk.
We caution that the foregoing list of risk factors is not
exhaustive and other factors could also adversely affect our
results. When relying on our forward-looking statements to make
decisions with respect to us, investors and others should carefully
consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and
potential events. Material economic assumptions underlying the
forward looking-statements contained in this press release are set
out in the Economic, market, and regulatory review and outlook
section and for each business segment under the Strategic
priorities and Outlook headings in our 2017 Annual Report, as
updated by the Economic, market and regulatory review and outlook
section in our Q1 2018 Report to Shareholders. Except as required
by law, we do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement
contained in this press release.
Additional information about these and other factors can be
found in the risk sections of our 2017 Annual Report and in the
Risk management section of our Q1 2018 Report to Shareholders.
SOURCE Royal Bank of Canada