Microsoft Corp. on Friday revealed its plan to increase buyback shares by 16.2 billion U.S. dollars after a tender offer fell short of its forecast.

This almost doubled its total stock buyback to 36.2 billion dollars through June 30, 2011.

Investors tendered 3.8 billion dollars of shares in an offer that expired last night, missing a goal of 20 billion, Microsoft said in a statement.

The world's largest software company boosted the buyback by 16 billion dollars to make up the difference.

Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer started the tender to bolster a share price that has fallen 10 percent in the past two years.

Buying back stock on the open market, rather than through a tender, means Microsoft probably will be forced to pay more for the shares. A failure to buy the amount of stock planned is likely to weigh on earnings per share.

Microsoft announced on July 20 that it would seek to buy back 20 billion dollars of shares, or about 8 percent of the outstanding stock, for between 22.50 to 24.75 dollars.

The company today said shareholders tendered 155 million shares, or 1.5 percent of the company's stock, at 24.75 dollars each.

Shares of Microsoft rose 31 cents to 25.01 dollars at 9:47 a.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. The stock, which had risen 5.5 percent since the tender offer was announced, underperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 Index for three straight years and last quarter had its worst performance since September 2002.

Source: Xinhua