Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. bought back about 800,000 of its shares, mostly held by the government, for 366.47 billion yen in off-market trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Friday, the company said.

The move followed an announcement Thursday by the Finance Ministry that it would unload 800,000 of its 7,227,000 NTT shares, reducing the government's stake in the telecommunications giant from 45.9 percent to 40.8 percent.

NTT said it bought each share for 458,000 yen.