SEBI Open Market Buy-Backs Return: IT, FMCG Stocks

SEBI Open Market Buy-Backs Are Back — What Changes on August 1, 2026 SEBI has reintroduced open market buy-backs through stock exchanges, effective August 1, 2026, reviving a route that was suspended in 2024 amid concerns about price manipulation. Companies now have three pathways to retire shares: the tender offer route, book-building, and the reinstated exchange route. The new framework sets a hard deadline of 66 working days for completion and requires that at least 40% of the earmarked buy-back amount be deployed in the first half of that window. That front-loading clause is significant. It signals SEBI's intent to prevent companies from announcing large buy-backs and then sitting on the cash — a pattern that had eroded investor confidence in the old mechanism. The timing isn't incidental. Indian equity markets have spent much of 2025 navigating a choppy global environment — US Federal Reserve rate uncertainty, geopolitical friction in the Middle East affecting crude prices, and a stronger dollar keeping FII flows volatile. Against that backdrop, a regulatory shift that encourages domestic capital recycling back to shareholders is a meaningful counterweight. Buy-backs reduce share count, support earnings per share, and signal management's conviction that the stock is undervalued. When global macro headwinds limit top-line growth visibility, buy-backs become one of the cleaner levers a board can pull. The sectors flagged most prominently by analysts are IT services, FMCG, and pharmaceuticals — and that framing holds up under scrutiny. These are businesses that generate substantial free cash flow, carry limited debt, and have historically been willing to return capital when organic deployment opportunities are constrained. Which Stocks Are Most Likely to Act First [Infosys](/stock/INFY) (NSE: INFY) and [TCS](/stock/TCS) (NSE: TCS) are the names most frequently cited by institutional desks. Infosys has conducted four buy-backs since 2017, including a Rs 9,200 ...