Air Canada has finalised terms for a substantial issuer bid to repurchase up to C$800 million of its shares through a modified Dutch auction. The offer covers as many as 27,586,206 Class A variable voting shares and Class B voting shares, with a price range of C$29.00 to C$33.00 per share. It is scheduled to begin on 20 August and expire on 24 September, with all repurchased shares to be cancelled.
The programme will be funded in part from proceeds of Air Canada’s recently announced minority equity investment in Aeroplan by funds managed by Blackstone and La Caisse, alongside other Canadian institutional investors. Based on the minimum price, the buyback would represent about 9.8% of the airline’s 280,167,997 issued and outstanding shares as of 17 August.
Air Canada, based in Montréal, filed the offer documents in Canada through SEDAR+. Odd-lot holders will be exempt from proration, and the airline can extend, vary or withdraw the bid before it closes. The structure gives shareholders the choice to tender into a market-based repurchase rather than a fixed-price offer.
The transaction follows earlier buybacks by the carrier, which had already deployed C$125 million in the second quarter of 2026 for share repurchases. The new offer extends that capital-return programme after the Aeroplan transaction and is one of the larger repurchases by a North American airline this year.