BCP Launches a €407.5 Million Share Buyback Covering 2.84% of Capital — Six-Month 4 June–4 December Window Anchors the 90%-of-Profits Distribution Pledge

Banco Comercial Português (BCP, Millennium BCP) opened on Wednesday 4 June 2026 the share-buyback programme that the Conselho de Administração approved at its session of 27 May, marking the first time the bank deploys the recompra (buyback) leg of its capital-distribution mechanism. The envelope: €407.5 million in cash committed to the open-market repurchase of own shares across a six-month window, closing 4 December 2026, representing roughly 2.84% of BCP's market capitalisation at the launch reference.

The buyback sits inside the bank's revised política de distribuição de capital — the capital-distribution policy that BCP refreshed under CEO Miguel Maya and CFO Miguel Bragança, committing to a payout ratio of 90% of consolidated prior-year net profit, split as 50% in cash dividends and 40% in share buybacks. The 2025 net profit print was the reference base — the bank closed last year with a record consolidated result above €1 billion at the group level, with the Portuguese operation contributing the lion's share and the Polish subsidiary Bank Millennium running its own dividend cadence under the Warsaw Stock Exchange regime. The 50/40 split of the 90% pledge mechanically produces the €407.5 million buyback envelope on top of the cash dividend already approved at the Assembleia Geral.

The programme was disclosed to the Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (CMVM) and is structured under the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR, Regulation EU 596/2014) safe-harbour for share buybacks — the regime that protects the bank from accusations of market manipulation provided that daily volume caps, price discipline and disclosure obligations are respected. Under MAR, BCP cannot purchase more than 25% of the average daily trading volume on any given session, must trade at prices no higher than the higher of the last independent trade or the highest current independent bid, and must publish the trade reports through the CMVM channel within seven trading days.

Strategic implications cut two ways. For shareholders, the buyback is accretive to earnings-per-share — the share count shrinks while the earnings denominator stays constant — and supports the per-share dividend trajectory in subsequent years. For BCP itself, the buyback signals confidence that the CET1 ratio remains comfortably above the European Central Bank's Pilar 2 Requirement (P2R) plus the combined buffer requirement, and that the bank does not see better organic uses for the capital than returning it to shareholders. BCP's CET1 ratio at the last reporting date stood at around 16.5%, well clear of the 11% supervisory floor.

The decision also slots into the broader Iberian and European banking trend. Spanish peers — Santander, BBVA, Caixabank and Sabadell — have all run sequential buyback programmes over the past 24 months, returning capital faster than the dividend pipe can absorb it. Italian banks have followed. The European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) approves these distributions case-by-case under the harmonised dividend-and-buyback assessment frame, with capital trajectories, NPL ratios and macro stress assumptions on the table. BCP cleared the SSM hurdle in late May, opening the door to today's launch.

BCP shares closed Tuesday at €0.78 on Euronext Lisbon. The buyback's daily volume cap and the six-month execution window leave room for the bank's broker — whose name has not been publicly disclosed in the launch communication — to phase the purchases against market liquidity without disrupting the PSI 20 tape.