Domino's Pizza bins tender offer

27th Nov 2009 07:35

Domino's Pizza has scrapped its tender offer, announced last week, because the shares have fallen about 7% below the tender price.The pizza chain said last week it would return £19m of surplus cash to shareholders through a tender offer for 6m shares at 317p.But the shares closed at just 295p last night, exceeding the maximum difference with the tender offer allowed under the company's existing share buy-back authority."Therefore, the company will look to return cash to shareholders as soon as practicable by means of either on market share buy-backs, dividend payments, or by way of further tender offers," read a statement Friday.Four directors were due to take part in the tender in respect of their own shareholdings: Chief executive Stephen Hemsley, Colin Halpern, Christopher Moore and Nigel Wray. Since 2004, Domino's has bought back 23m shares and returned approximately £31.7m of cash. Going forward, it intends to purchase approximately 2% to 3% of the existing issued share capital each year, it said today. Trading has continued strongly since its last update in September and the board is confident of the company fully meeting the market's current expectations for the full year, the group said recently.