Vancouver's Teck Cominco Ltd. (TSX:TCK.B) plans to spend between $1.2 billion and $2.2 billion to reduce its number of public shares outstanding.
The company said it will acquire up to 40 million of its Class B shares under a normal course issuer bid. If fully exercised, the number of public shares outstanding would fall by up to 9.47%.
Teck Cominco said the share buy-back is an appropriate investment of cash it wasn't using to acquire or develop assets.
For the nine-month period ending September 30, 2007, the company had more than $1.7 billion in cash, even after its $2.6 billion acquisition of Aur Resources and the $777 million spent on other investments, property, plant and equipment.
In 2007, Teck Cominco spent more than $500 million to buy back 13.1 million Class-B shares.
Teck Cominco's share price range during the past week: between $39.27 and $41.77; 52-week high: $53.35; 52-week low: $28.