SBM Offshore executed €3.58 million in share repurchases over four consecutive trading sessions, bringing the current program total to €41.2 million. The Amsterdam-listed floating production systems provider disclosed the transactions through standard regulatory filings, with daily purchase volumes clustered between €850,000 and €950,000. The shares were acquired at prices ranging from €13.82 to €14.06, reflecting a tight band during a period when Brent crude held above $73 per barrel.
The four-day window represents approximately 8.7 percent of the program's total capital deployed since authorization. SBM Offshore's board approved the current repurchase mandate in May of last year, allocating up to €500 million for buybacks through October 2025. At the current run rate, the company will exhaust roughly €110 million of that authorization by year-end, assuming no acceleration. The FPSO operator generated $427 million in EBITDA during the first half of 2024, with free cash flow of $183 million after capital expenditures tied to newbuild commitments in Guyana and Brazil.
The timing aligns with a quieter period in SBM Offshore's contracting calendar. The company delivered the *Prosperity* FPSO to ExxonMobil's Payara field in Guyana last November and holds lease commitments worth $18.3 billion through 2040. However, the next wave of awards—linked to Shell's Whale project in the Gulf of Mexico and Petrobras's Búzios expansion—will not convert to revenue until mid-2026. This creates a window where capital return becomes the highest-value use of cash, particularly with the stock trading at 9.2 times forward EBITDA, below the 10.5 times median for offshore services peers. The Dutch dividend withholding tax of 15 percent makes buybacks incrementally more attractive for non-resident institutional holders, who represent 68 percent of the float.
Operators and allocators should track whether SBM Offshore accelerates repurchase velocity after the company reports third-quarter results in mid-November. Management typically provides updated free cash flow guidance at that juncture, and any upward revision tied to early lease payments from Petrobras would support a faster buyback pace. Watch also for movement on the company's cost-of-capital refinancing, as lower interest expense on the $4.1 billion lease portfolio would unlock additional room for shareholder returns without crimping growth capital. The Guyana production ramp remains the swing variable—each incremental 50,000 barrels per day from the Stabroek block adds roughly $22 million in annual lease revenue to SBM Offshore's backlog.
The €41.2 million deployed so far amounts to 0.8 percent of SBM Offshore's market capitalization, leaving €458.8 million in authorized capacity through October next year.