Amazon’s Board Authorizes Buy-Back of Notes and Stocks

(NewsVisual, powered by IntellectSpace) -- In a move that seems designed to shore up the company’s long-term share value, Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced on Friday that its Board of Directors authorized the repurchase of notes and stocks for approximately $1.9 billion.

The Directors’ current authorization supersedes their February 2006 $500 million debt buy-back authorization.

The repurchase authorization for notes affects 4.75 percent or $899 million of outstanding principle in the form of Convertible Subordinated Notes that are due in 2009, as well as for 6.89 percent or EUR240 million of outstanding principle in the form of Convertible Subordinated Notes, the company said in its statement.

In addition to Amazon’s Directors’ authorization to repurchase the company’s debt, the board also issued a buy-back authorization for its common stock, which replaces the April 2007 repurchase authorization for $500 million.

The company’s Senior Executives are now instructed to buy $1 billion of the Amazon’s common stock within the next 24-month period whenever they deem market conditions to be propitious.

“The program allows the company to opportunistically repurchase its shares when it believes that doing so would enhance long-term shareholder value,” Amazon said in its statement.

The markets appeared to be responding to the company’s news positively, sending its share price up from the previous close $70.91 to $73.65 on Friday in mid-morning trading (10:29am ET).  Still, the company’s share price has yet to recover to the $75.20 level it was at on Jan 31 during early-noon (1:19pm ET) when we last reported on the company.

To assess how knowledgeable they are regarding current financial conditions, NewsVisual created an IntellectSpace Knowledge Map that illustrates the current business connections among Amazon’s Board of Directors.

The Knowledge Map shows that several of the company’s Directors have strong board-room connections to other companies.  The most noteworthy one is, perhaps, Director L John Doerr who sits on the boards of three other companies, including Move Inc, Intuit Inc, and Google Inc.

The following Amazon board members are also noteworthy for their business connections:

Director John Seely Brown also serves on the boards of Corning Inc and Varian Medical Systems Inc; Director Thomas O Ryder also serves on the boards of Readers Digest Association Inc and Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc; and Director Myrtle S Potter also serves on the boards of Foxhollow Technologies Inc and Medco Health Solutions Inc.

(Note: the information contained and presented in Knowledge Maps is public information from the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States of America).

Click here or copy this link into your Internet Explorer browser for an interactive version of this IntellectSpace Knowledge Map: http://nv.intellectspace.com/ispace/GuestMonitor.aspx?id=f9e0128f-d8c4-4f95-9682-a777bf486015