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Ashtead starts share buyback, lifts full-year forecast

(Reuters) - British industrial equipment hire group Ashtead Group Plc launched a share buyback programme of up to 1 billion pounds as it lifted its forecast for annual results due to hurricane clear-up activity in the United States.

The company, which hires out diggers and tools on short-term contracts, also announced that its chairman, Chris Cole, would retire next year after serving in the position for almost 10 years.

Ashtead is starting a share buyback programme of at least 500 million pounds and up to 1 billion over the next 18 months, it said on Tuesday.

Ashtead, whose Sunbelt U.S. business accounted for nearly 85 percent of first-half revenue, said the clean-up and rebuilding needed after hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria resulted in incremental rental revenue of $40 million to $45 million.

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The FTSE 100 company, which has benefited from strong growth in its main North American market and a weaker British pound, raised its interim dividend by 16 percent to 5.5 pence per share.

The company said underlying pretax profit rose to 536.9 million pounds from 425.9 million pounds for the six months ended Oct. 31.

Underlying rental revenue rose 22.8 percent to 1.77 billion pounds.

"Whilst we would anticipate that activity levels would normalise during the second half, post-hurricane clean-up, we expect full-year results to be ahead of our prior expectations," Ashtead said.

(Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru, editing by Louise Heavens)