Stock Exchange Release 10/02/2009 9:45
Sanoma's Board of Directors has today decided to cancel the treasury shares held by the Company. In total, Sanoma holds 2,425,000 treasury shares equalling to 1.48% of Company's shares and votes.
Cancelling these own shares will decrease the number of shares from 163,368,658 to 160,943,658. The cancellation does not affect the Company's share capital. The decrease in the number of shares does not have significant effect to shareholdings or voting power of other Sanoma shareholders.
The cancellation of treasury shares is estimated to be entered into the Trade Register on or about 19 February 2009.
Sanoma began to repurchase its shares on 10 August 2007 on the basis of an authorisation from Annual General Meeting of 4 April 2007 and continued the buyback on 12 June 2008 under the authorisation from Annual General Meeting of 1 April 2008. These cancelled shares have been purchased from NASDAQ OMX Helsinki during 11 Feb-26 Mar 2008 and 12 Jun-27 Aug 2008, and the Company has used EUR 37.5 million of its unrestricted equity for these purchases.
The authorisation to repurchase Company's own shares is valid until 1 April 2009. Sanoma shares can be repurchased to develop the Company's capital structure, carry out potential corporate acquisitions or other business arrangements, or to be otherwise transferred, retained as treasury shares or cancelled. Under the current authorisation Sanoma can repurchase 7,620,000 shares.
Sanoma Corporation
Kim Ignatius
Chief Financial Officer
Additional information: Sanoma's Group Communications, tel +358 105 19 5062 or communications@sanoma.com
Sanoma inspires, informs and connects. We bring information, experiences, education and entertainment to millions of people every day. We make sure that quality content and interesting products and services are easily available and meet the demands of our readers, viewers and listeners. We offer challenging and interesting employment for over 20,000 people in 20 countries throughout Europe. In 2007, the Group's net sales totalled EUR 2.9 billion.