SINGAPORE - Some S$425 million of shares was repurchased by 82 stocks in 2017, compared with the shares worth S$826 million bought back in 2016 by more than 100 Singapore-listed companies.

The drop in buyback levels corresponded with comparatively stronger price gains in the benchmark Straits Times Index, bourse operator Singapore Exchange (SGX) noted, in a report out on Thursday (Jan 4) evening on its SGX My Gateway investor education portal.

OCBC Bank made up the lion's share of 2017's buyback consideration, at 52 per cent.

Its share buyback began on April 28, 2017, with a mandate of roughly 209.12 million shares.

Nine more stocks together accounted for another 29 per cent of the year's buyback consideration.

They were Keppel Corporation, Silverlake Axis, Yanlord Land Group, Singapore Technologies Engineering, SIA Engineering, Bumitama Agri, Singapore Post, DeClout and M1.

But the SGX My Gateway report added that these buyback values can span multiple 12-month mandates for each stock.

The figures are for the 2017 calendar year, rather than associated financial years.

On a monthly basis, buyback consideration in 2017 was highest in May, June and August.

Still, the last month of the year saw 27 companies picking up around 28.26 million shares.

These were worth S$42.9 million in all - up 9 per cent on the previous month and nearly five times the value of share buybacks in December 2016.