On September 16, Tencent announced in a statement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that the company repurchased 2.67 million shares, with a cost of approximately 1.003 billion Hong Kong dollars.
In March of this year, Tencent announced plans to repurchase more than 100 billion Hong Kong dollars of shares by 2024, which is more than twice the amount repurchased by Tencent in 2023, which was 49.4 billion Hong Kong dollars. Since the implementation of the repurchase plan on May 17, Tencent has made multiple moves, repurchasing a total of 0.1577 billion shares with a repurchase amount of nearly 60 billion Hong Kong dollars, making it truly the "repurchase king" in the Hong Kong stock market.
Looking at the historical situation, tencent's repurchase efforts have been continuously increasing, with the repurchase amount reaching HKD 82.4 billion so far this year, already surpassing the full-year repurchase amount in 2023.
In the current Hong Kong stock market, stock buybacks have become a significant trend. Wind data shows that on September 16, 2024, 32 Hong Kong-listed companies implemented stock buybacks, with 6 companies repurchasing amounts exceeding 10 million Hong Kong dollars.
Since the beginning of this year, the repurchase amount in the Hong Kong stock market has exceeded HK$200 billion, surpassing the full year of 2022 and 2023.
Overall, as of the beginning of 2024, there have been 237 stocks in the Hong Kong stock market that have conducted buybacks, an increase of 92 compared to the same period last year; among them, 52 stocks have accumulated buyback amounts exceeding HK$0.1 billion; the total buyback amount is HK$201.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 172%. The number and scale of buybacks have reached a historical high for the same period.
Internet, financial, and pharmaceutical industry leaders continue to be the main force of buybacks. As of September 16th, HSBC Holdings, Meituan-W, and AIA have conducted buybacks exceeding HK$10 billion this year, with amounts of HK$30.3 billion, HK$26.9 billion, and HK$23.9 billion, respectively. Companies such as Kuaishou, Xiaomi Group, Dongyue Group, Hang Seng Bank, CK Asset, Wuxi Bio, Yum China, CSPC Pharma, and others have also conducted buybacks exceeding HK$1 billion.
"Since August, Hong Kong stocks have performed relatively better than A-shares, with the logic based on the resilience of fundamentals, the increase in funds, and the return of AH premium to a reasonable level, which further boosts the cost-effectiveness of Hong Kong stocks. Last week, the number and amount of buyback cases both reached a new high since 2010 (345 cases/ HK$11.4 billion), becoming a major resilience factor," according to a research report from HTSC on September 16th.
According to research by CSC, in the past two years, major internet companies listed in Hong Kong, such as Tencent, Xiaomi, and Alibaba, have carried out large-scale dividend and buyback activities, which have played a role in boosting stock prices. Among them, Tencent's buyback scale has continued to grow, and the buyback amount is far ahead, while Alibaba has performed outstandingly in terms of dividends. The trend of dividend buybacks is related to the transformation of large internet companies from high-leverage expansion to the recovery of liquidity and focus on shareholder returns. Currently, high dividend AH stocks still have a certain safety margin and high cost-effectiveness. Inflows of southbound funds continue to enhance the pricing power of southbound trading, and Tencent Holdings is particularly bullish in the near term. The dividend buyback trend benefits all major internet companies listed in Hong Kong and provides a new focus.
Editor/Lambor