Euronav's buyback spree has more than doubled the number of its own shares that it has taken off the market.
The move comes amid an effort by the tanker giant to address an imbalance between its stock price and net asset value by snapping up its own shares.
New York and Brussels-listed Euronav disclosed on Wednesday that after repurchasing three separate tranches of shares for $53.4m over the past three weeks has pushed its holding to 5.6%.
The company began the year with 4.94m shares in its treasury, which makes up 2.25% of all outstanding shares.
The three buybacks — 3.38m for $28.1m on 9 July, 1.04m for $9.2m on 20 July and 1.77m for $16.1m on 24 July — pushed its holding to 11.1m shares.
In May, shareholders gave Euronav the go-ahead to use $216m to buy back as many as 10% of its 220m outstanding shares in an effort to return capital to shareholders.
It still has $163m to make moves in the market.
The repurchases came after the company tried to get shareholder approval for similar plans in March and April, but were rebuffed both times. The March plan called for up to 20% of outstanding shares, while the April plan dropped the amount to 10%.
The company failed to get enough attendance in April, so it scrapped the requirements for the May meeting.
Euronav also launched a dividend plan in January, that could see it return more than 80% of its earnings back to shareholders.
The company is set to release its second-quarter earnings on 6 August. It is expected to be a good quarter for the company.
In midday trading on Wednesday its shares were up $0.16 to $9.88.
Since the first buyback, Euronav shares have steadily risen, from $8.40.
