MONTREAL, May 31, 2012 /CNW Telbec/ - The Board of Directors of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. (the "Corporation") has filed a notice to renew, for a 12-month period, its normal course issuer bid, which will expire on June 1, 2012. In the notice, the Corporation states that a maximum of 3,000,000 Common Shares, representing less than 2% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares as of May 17, 2012, may be purchased for cancellation. As of May 17, 2012, the Corporation had 151,034,276 Common Shares issued and outstanding, 127,916,992 of which made up the public float. As a general practice when managing its capital, the Corporation repurchases its Common Shares mainly to offset the dilutive effect of stock issuance under its stock option programs.
These purchases are to be made through the facilities of the Toronto Stock Exchange and/or alternative Canadian trading systems, in accordance with the Toronto Stock Exchange's policy on normal course issuer bids. The price the Corporation will pay for any Common Shares will be the market price at the time of acquisition, plus brokerage fees. Purchases may commence on June 4, 2012 and will terminate no later than June 3, 2013. Certain directors and senior officers of the Corporation may sell securities of the Corporation during the course of the normal course issuer bid.
During the period that the Normal Course Issuer Bid is outstanding, the Corporation does not intend to make purchases of its Common Shares other than by means of open market transactions or such other means as may be permitted by the Toronto Stock Exchange and securities regulatory authorities as applicable, including block purchases of Common Shares.
The average daily trading volume of the Corporation's Common Shares through the facilities of the Toronto Stock Exchange over the last six completed calendar months was 707,221 ("ADTV"). Accordingly, under the Toronto Stock Exchange Rules and policies, the Corporation is entitled on any trading day to purchase up to 25% of the ADTV, which totals 176,805 Common Shares, for the next 12-month period of the Normal Course Issuer Bid. In excess of the daily 176,805 repurchase limit, the Corporation may also purchase, once a week, a block of Common Shares not owned by any insiders, which may exceed such daily limit, in accordance with the Toronto Stock Exchange Rules.
During the period from June 2, 2011 to May 17, 2012 inclusively, the Corporation purchased 444,200 of its outstanding Common Shares, at a weighted average price of $45.31.
SNC-Lavalin (TSX: SNC) is one of the leading engineering and construction groups in the world and a major player in the ownership of infrastructure, and in the provision of operations and maintenance services. SNC-Lavalin has offices across Canada and in over 40 other countries around the world, and is currently working in some 100 countries. www.snclavalin.com
| Reference in this press release, and hereafter, to the "Company" or to "SNC-Lavalin" means, as the context may require, SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. and all or some of its subsidiaries or joint ventures, or SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. or one or more of its subsidiaries or joint ventures. Statements made in this press release that describe the Company's or management's budgets, estimates, expectations, forecasts, objectives, predictions or projections of the future may be "forward-looking statements", which can be identified by the use of the conditional or forward-looking terminology such as "anticipates", "believes", "estimates", "expects", "may", "plans", "projects", "should", "will", or the negative thereof or other variations thereon. The Company cautions that its actual actions and/or results could differ materially from those expressed or implied in forward-looking statements, or could affect the extent to which a particular projection materializes, as a result of risks and uncertainties relating to: (a) cost overruns from fixed-price contracts; (b) failure to meet scheduled dates or performance standards on a particular project; (c) attracting and retaining qualified personnel and any strike, partial work stoppage or other labour actions by the Company's or its subcontractors' unionized employees; (d) failure of the Company's joint venture partners to perform their obligations; (e) failure by the Company's subcontractors to deliver their portion of a particular project according to contractual terms; (f) the financial performance of the Company's infrastructure concession investments during a particular concession period; (g) the Company obtaining new contract awards; (h) revenue backlog and whether such revenue backlog will ultimately result in earnings and when revenues and earnings from such backlog will be recognized; (i) foreign currency exchange and interest rates; (j) credit risk and the delay in collection from the Company's clients; (k) information management including its integrity, reliability and security; (l) the inherent limitations of the Company's control framework and the effectiveness of the measures implemented by the Company to strengthen its internal controls over financial reporting following the identification by the Company of material weaknesses relating to the design and operational effectiveness of its internal controls over financial reporting as of December 31, 2011 and March 31, 2012 respectively; (m) uncertain economic and political conditions in the countries in which the Company does business; (n) any lack of strong safety practices by the Company or its subcontractors exposing the Company to lost time on projects, penalties, lawsuits and impact on future contract awards; (o) the Company's inability to comply with environmental laws and regulations; (p) the Company's reputation as a result of, among others, any quality or performance issues on its projects, a poor health and safety record, non-compliance with laws or regulations by the Company's employees, agents, subcontractors, suppliers and/or partners, or creation of pollution and contamination; (q) the inability to adequately integrate an acquired business in a timely manner; (r) non-compliance with laws and regulations by an employee, agent, supplier, subcontractor and/or partner of the Company or any further regulatory developments; (s) failure by the Company's employees, agents, suppliers, subcontractors and/or partners to comply with anti-bribery laws; (t) any litigation and/or legal matters to which the Company is a party; (u) any negative publicity associated with the Independent Review led by the Company's Audit Committee of the facts and circumstances surrounding certain payments that were documented to construction projects to which they did not relate, and certain other contracts, as well as any sanctions that could be brought against the Company in connection with possible violations of law or contracts should additional facts adverse to the Company become known in connection with such Independent Review including as to matters beyond its scope; (v) the proposed class action lawsuit filed on March 1, 2012 against the Company with the Quebec Superior Court and the proposed class action lawsuits filed on May 9, 2012 against the Company with the Ontario Superior Court; and (w) the investigations of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the World Bank relating to the Company's involvement in a past submission as the Owner's Engineer for the Bangladesh government. For more information on risks and uncertainties, and assumptions that would cause the Company's actual results to differ from current expectations, please refer to the section "Risks and Uncertainties" and the section "How We Analyze and Report our Results", respectively, in the Company's 2011 Financial Report under "Management's Discussion and Analysis" and the section "Risks and Uncertainties" in the Company's first quarter 2012 Management's Discussion and Analysis. The forward-looking statements herein reflect the Company's expectations as at the date of this press release and are subject to change after this date. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any such forward-looking statements, unless required by applicable legislation or regulation. |
Investors:
Denis Jasmin
Vice-President, Investor Relations
514-393-8000, ext. 7553
[email protected]
Media:
Leslie Quinton
Vice-President, Global Corporate Communications
514-393-8000, ext. 7354
[email protected]
SNC-Lavalin press releases are available on its website at www.snclavalin.com.
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