The Euronext Amsterdam building. Photo Credit: Bootuitjes
Roughly four months and 26.7 million shares later, Universal Music Group (UMG) has officially completed its €500 million (currently $568.5 million) stock buyback program.
Having provided weekly repurchase updates from the outset, UMG confirmed hitting the €500 million mark and wrapping the program in a formal release today. Between July 20th and the 24th, the major bought 634,455 shares at an average of $20.63/€18.14 a pop, for about $13.1 million/€11.5 million overall.
And with that, €499.2 million has been deployed since late March; Universal Music “has now completed the share buyback program,” the company spelled out for good measure.
Two technical notes: First, the major in May received shareholder “authorization” to double the relevant tranche’s size to $1.14 billion/€1 billion. Second, a significant portion of the follow-up capital, not that attributable to the newly wrapped program, went towards Pershing Square’s offloaded shares.
As most already know, Pershing sold its Universal Music interest following a failed takeover attempt.
Less widely discussed, however, are the sizable costs UMG incurred in connection with a shelved secondary listing in the States (over $50 million) and the episode’s impact on various aspects of the major’s operations.
Just in passing, it was only after Pershing moved forward with the purchase attempt that Universal Music kicked off the share buyback program and unveiled plans to sell some of its Spotify stock.
Additionally, investors’ purported frustration with an alleged lack of earnings transparency factored into Pershing’s proposal. As such, when delivering UMG’s first-quarter results, CEO Lucian Grainge indicated that “in subsequent earnings calls, we’re going to be providing greater insight into the ways we have evaluated investments in our business.”
Now, three days out from one of these subsequent calls, it’ll be interesting to see what changes. Adjacent to this top-level observation, it certainly hasn’t been lost on investors that enhanced earnings color now will make it easier to gauge the all-important revenue results of AI partnerships in the not-so-distant future.
At present, with the €500 million buyback program in the books, Universal Music stock (UMG on the Euronext Amsterdam) is worth $21.54/€18.94 per share. That’s up from an all-time low of $17.52/€15.41 in March but remains noticeably beneath UMG’s value at the same point in July 2025.
Stateside, Warner Music stock (NASDAQ: WMG) is in a similar spot: Down 11% from July 2025 but up materially from a 52-week low of $23.34 per share in March 2026. More pressingly, both stocks have suffered double-digit slips – 19% for UMG against closer to 27% for WMG – during the past five or so years.
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