(By Balaseshan) Piper Jaffray Companies (NYSE:PJC), an investment bank and asset management firm, said its board of directors has authorized the repurchase of up to $100 million of its outstanding common stock, effective October 1.
The principal purpose of the share repurchase program is to manage the firm's equity capital relative to its overall capital structure and to offset the dilutive effect of employee equity-based awards.
Under the firm's three-year syndicated bank facility, share repurchases cannot exceed the amount of employee equity grants issued in a calendar year. The firm has substantially reached the covenant limit for 2012 under the bank facility, which expires in December of 2013.
The share repurchase authorization expires September 30, 2014. As of August 10, 2012, Piper Jaffray had 17.8 million common shares outstanding.
Piper Jaffray provides a set of products and services, including equity and debt capital markets products, public finance services, financial advisory services, equity and fixed income institutional brokerage, equity and fixed income research, and asset management services.
The company markets the investment banking and institutional securities business under Piper Jaffray name. Its operations consists four components: Investment Banking, Equity and Fixed Income Institutional Brokerage, Asset Management and Other Income.
PJC is trading up 2.26% at $22.20 on Wednesday. The stock has been trading between $16.72 and $27.69 for the past 52 weeks.