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IBM to Buy Back Up to $4 Billion of Its Own Shares

IBM to Buy Back Up to $4 Billion of Its Own Shares

(Bloomberg) -- International Business Machines Corp. said it will repurchase as much as $4 billion in stock, adding to about $1.4 billion remaining from a previous share buyback plan.

IBM said on Sunday that it would stop doing buybacks in 2020 and 2021 to save cash for its $33 billion acquisition of Red Hat. The transaction is expected to close next year.

The technology giant also said in a statement Tuesday that it will pay a dividend of $1.57 a share on Dec. 10. As of that date, IBM will have paid consecutive quarterly dividends every year since 1916.

The shares were down 2.3 percent, to $116.84, at 12:03 p.m. in New York. They were the biggest decliner on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gerrit De Vynck in New York at gdevynck@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz, Alistair Barr

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