PennyMac Financial Rewards Shareholders With Additional Buybacks

PennyMac Financial Services, Inc. PFSI recently announced that its board of directors has approved an additional buyback program. Also, the company will repurchase its remaining shares from The BlackRock Foundation, the charitable arm of BlackRock, Inc. BX. About 6,975,323 shares will be repurchased at a price of $34 per share.

The company’s board has given its approval for increasing the stock-repurchase program from $50 million to $500 million, including the $31 million remaining under the initial share-repurchase program. With the conclusion of the BlackRock transaction, PennyMac Financial will have $244 million remaining under the buyback program.

The recent development has cheered investors, with the company’s share price rallying 6.4% after the news surfaced.

Per the president and CEO of PennyMac Financial, David Spector, "The Company is able to deploy a portion of its excess capital in a transaction that we expect to generate superior returns on equity and to be significantly accretive to PFSI’s earnings per share. Furthermore, the increase in the repurchase authorization allows us to pursue additional opportunistic repurchases of PFSI shares in the future."

At its inception, PennyMac Financial’s investors included BlackRock, HC Partners and the company’s founding management. This February, BlackRock transferred its entire stake in the company to two charitable institutions and subsequently, sold 7.8 million shares of PennyMac Financial. With the transaction’s completion, about 22% and 23% of PennyMac Financial is owned by HC Partners, and the company’s executive office and directors, respectively.

Over the past year, shares of the company have surged 80.1%, compared with the 21% decline of the industry it belongs to.

Currently, PennyMac Financial carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

A few other finance stocks that have announced new/additional buyback authorization in 2020 include Jefferies Financial JEF and First Midwest Bancorp, Inc. FMBI. Jefferies’ Financial increased its buyback program of $250 million in January, while First Midwest announced a new share-buyback plan in February, with authorization to repurchase common shares worth $200 million.

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