AutoZone Inc. (NYSE: AZO) made some waves in the market on Wednesday following the announcement of a new share buyback plan. The company announced that its board of directors authorized the repurchase of an additional $750 million of the common stock in connection with its ongoing share repurchase program.
Since the inception of the repurchase program in 1998, and including the $750 million, AutoZone’s board of directors has authorized a grand total of $17.2 billion in share repurchases. Keep in mind that AutoZone has a market cap of roughly $24 billion.
Bill Giles, Executive Vice President, CFO, Information Technology and ALLDATA, commented:
AutoZone’s continued strong financial performance allows us to repurchase our stock while maintaining our investment grade credit ratings. We remain committed to utilizing share repurchases within the bounds of a disciplined capital structure to enhance stockholder returns while maintaining adequate liquidity to execute our plans.
A few analysts weighed in on AutoZone ahead of this announcement:
- Oppenheimer has an Outperform rating and raised its price target to $900 from $800.
- Jefferies reiterated a Hold rating and raised its price target to $810 from $750.
- JPMorgan has a Neutral rating and raised its price target to $785 from $775.
So far in 2016, AutoZone has outperformed the broad markets, with the stock up 5.9%. Over the course of the past 52 weeks, the stock rose 17%.
Shares of AutoZone were trading up 1.3% at $796.32 on Wednesday, with a consensus analyst price target of $855.14 and a 52-week trading range of $652.19 to $803.83.
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