The board of directors of privately-held MGM Holdings Inc. has authorized an addition of $300 million to its share repurchase plan.
MGM, home to the “James Bond” franchise, said Friday that since inception of the plan in 2011, it has repurchased over 26 million shares. That’s 33% of the originally issued shares of common stock for approximately $1.1 billion.
MGM emerged from a prepackaged bankruptcy in 2010 and named Spyglass partners Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum as the Co-Chairs and Co-CEOs of the studio. Barber became the sole chairman and CEO of MGM in 2012 with Birnbaum becoming a producer.
“I am very pleased with the board’s authorization to increase our buyback program by $300 million,” Barber said in a statement on Friday. “We remain focused on driving stockholder value and believe that these future repurchases will be accretive to earnings, a good use of our capital, and will be executed opportunistically while maintaining a very strong and flexible balance sheet.”
Citing strong performance by the James Bond movie “Spectre,” MGM Holdings reported Thursday a 62% hike in profits to $252 million for 2015. MGM also reported revenue of $1.56 billion and a record adjusted EBITDA of $381 million for the year.
