Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) announced today that it completed the repurchase of Roche shares that had been held by Novartis. On 4 November 2021, Roche and Novartis had announced this repurchase. The Extraordinary General Meeting of Roche Holding Ltd passed the resolutions required for the repurchase and the capital reduction on 26 November 2021. In accordance with the respective resolution of the Extraordinary General Meeting of 26 November 2021, the 53,309,000 shares have now been repurchased by Roche and the corresponding consideration has been transferred to Novartis. The repurchased shares will be cancelled upon completion of the corresponding procedure.

Christoph Franz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Roche: “With this transaction, we regain full strategic flexibility without compromising our operational scope of action. Rating agencies have confirmed the high quality of our ratings. On the basis of an unchanged dividend policy, all holders of Roche equity securities will benefit from the repurchase and the resolved capital reduction by the cancellation of the repurchased shares and the earnings accretion resulting therefrom.”

As previously announced, the transaction does not change the communicated outlook for the full year. Roche expects a mid-single-digit sales growth at constant exchange rates. Core EPS growth at constant exchange rates is targeted to be broadly in line with sales growth. Furthermore, Roche is aiming at increasing the dividend in Swiss francs also for 2021.