Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT), Japan's largest telecoms firm, plans to spend up to 600 billion yen ($5.74 billion) to buy back its own shares this business year, aiming to help absorb heavy stock sales by the government, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said on Sunday. The business daily also reported that NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan's largest mobile carrier and a 58 percent-owned unit of NTT, plans to boost its dividend by 50 percent or more in the business year started April 1 as a way to give cash back to shareholders and bolster its share price.

Both NTT and DoCoMo are expected to post a drop in operating profit this year amid intense price competition in the fixed-line and mobile phone markets, but both are flush with cash and have been under pressure from investors to boost shareholder returns.
NTT management will propose a plan to shareholders in June under which the company would be able to buy back up to about 1.2 million shares at a maximum value of 600 billion yen in the 2005/06 financial year, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

Copyright Reuters, 2005