Giant retailer Woolworths Ltd (ASX: WOW) said on Monday that its $704 million off-market buy-back has been wrapped up as the company gave credit to encouraging shareholders support, which it maintained was instrumental in the successful transaction.

Woolworths said that shareholders agreed to a 14 percent discount on their tendered shares, leading to a total of 27.5 million shares being bought back from shareholders at a final buy-back price level of $25.62 per share.

The grocery operator said that the price tag for each security was actually beyond the minimum price ceiling originally stipulated in the tender form, adding that all shares returned to the company covered for some 2.2 percent distributed capital by Woolworths.

Woolworths said that prior to the scaling back of tenders, it has already purchased 201 shares from company shareholders and those holding 306 shares or much less saw their units being bought back following the successful tendering of their entire share holdings.

The grocery giant also noted that all the other successful tenders were scaled back by up to 88.2 percent.

Immediately following the successful buy-backs, Woolworths said that it now looks forward to a favourable class ruling from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) that would label the $22.54 per share buy-back price as a fully franked dividend.

Also, the company said that the tax office should be able to determine capital proceeds of $6.00 solely for capital gains purposes over the buy-back price, which covers $3.08 for the capital component and a $2.92 excess of the tax value.

Woolworths announced that shareholders should be able to collect payment for their shares by Monday next week.