By Victoria Stilwell AOL Inc. (AOL) unveiled plans to buy back an added $550 million in stock after a weak response to its Dutch auction tender offer as it looks to return to shareholders all of the proceeds of its $1.1 billion patent sale to Microsoft Corp. (MSFT). The company's shares have risen 15% since the offer was unveiled in late June. The stock closed Thursday at $31.50; the offer was good at a price between $27 to $30. Shares, which were unchanged premarket, had traded at the bottom end of the buyback range for the month before the deal was unveiled. The company will buy back $8.8 million in shares after it closed the $400 million tender offer. The company on Friday said 292,435 shares had been tendered at a price of $30 under its offer that expired Thursday. AOL had about 94 million shares outstanding as of July 27. Following the tender offer, the board authorized the buyback of an additional $550 million shares by the end of 2012 on top of the $40.8 million in shares remaining from the company's repurchase program from August 2011. "We continue to focus on executing our strategy and improving our operations and remain committed to returning 100% of the patent transaction proceeds to shareholders by year-end," said Chief Executive Tim Armstrong. AOL has said it needs to employ several steps and potentially several methods of returning the money from the patent sale to limit the tax impact. These methods could include tender offers, buybacks in the open market, privately negotiated transactions and dividend payments, it said. The company reported last week that it swung to an easy profit in the second quarter as its patent deal with Microsoft gave results a big boost and advertising sales rose for the fifth-straight quarter. Write to Victoria Stilwell at Victoria.Stilwell@dowjones.com Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
