SEOUL — Samsung Electronics plans a share buyback program worth about 90 trillion won ($58.61 billion) after agreeing to give stock bonuses to employees in recent wage talks, the Yonhap News Agency reported on Wednesday, sending shares of the South Korean chip giant up more than 6 percent.
The memory-chip maker may soon announce details on the plan, Yonhap said, citing unidentified industry sources. Samsung Electronics also did not respond to requests for comment.
Management and union last month reached a pay deal under which Samsung is expected to set aside about 10.5 percent of its annual operating profit for special bonuses for the chip division in the form of stocks, sparking concerns over inequality at the company.
Employees at Samsung will be able to immediately sell a third of the treasury shares they receive as bonuses, but they will have to wait for a year to sell another third and a further year for the remainder.
Samsung also may need to repurchase additional stocks to award employees under a separate compensation program, called the "Performance Stock Unit," which was introduced last October to align employee rewards with long-term stock performance, Yonhap said.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are expected to post record profits this year and next year, as the AI boom has fueled a shortage of memory chips as technology firms race to build data centers, driving up prices for chips to train and run AI models.
Samsung shares jumped 6.3 percent, outperforming SK Hynix's 1.6 percent gain and reclaiming the top spot by common-share market capitalization in South Korea.
