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Health and Healthcare

The Great Merck Buyback.. Dividend Too (MRK)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MRK) barely has its Schering-Plough deal behind it.  And today came the announcement of its dividend rate, but more importantly came word of a large share repurchase program.  The quarterly dividend for common stock is remaining at $0.38 per quarter, which gives a  yield of almost 4.20%.  It also declared a quarterly dividend of $3.75 per share on the company’s mandatory convertible preferred stock for the first quarter of 2010. But this buyback is what will excite most investors.

Merck’s Board of Directors approved a share buyback plan for up to $3 billion of common stock for its treasury. These share purchases will be made on the open market or in block transactions or in privately negotiated transactions.

Unfortunately, a down trading day and a recent huge merger isn’t enough to please many.  Trading floors and investors are also getting further and further away from caring about buying stocks ahead of Thanksgiving.

Merck shares late in the day are down 0.5% at $36.24 late in the day, and the 52-week trading range is $20.95 to $36.96.

JON C. OGG
NOVEMBER 24, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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