Qualcomm, an American global semiconductor company, announced today that its board of directors has given approval to the company to repurchase up to $15 billion of its common stock.

It has been told that the board initially gave approval for a major increase in the company's capital return program in order to deliver value for stockholders.

The company is planning to repurchase $10 billion of its common stock within twelve months of this announcement.

The company's board has also approved a 14% of increase in Qualcomm's quarterly cash dividend, which raised the annualized dividend payout to $1.92 per share of common stock.

Due to this move, the cash dividend will increase from $0.42 to $0.48 per share of common stock and will be effective for quarterly dividends payable after March 25, 2015.

The company is also planning to finance the capital return program mostly by accessing the public debt markets in 2015.

Steve Mollenkopf, CEO, Qualcomm, said, "Our business continues to generate substantial operating cash flow, and today's announcement represents an important step in returning that cash to our owners while still preserving the strategic flexibility needed to drive stockholder value through growth".

He further said that he is quite happy that the company has maintained to be on the track of returning capital to stockholders. This has helped the company to return nearly $37 billion to stockholders since these programs began in 2003.

As of March 9, 2015, $2.1 billion were available under the company's prior stock repurchase authorization.

In fiscal 2015, the company has returned $3.9 billion to stockholders through $3.2 billion in stock repurchases and $697 million in cash dividends.

Earlier in 2014, the company exceeded its commitment to return 75% of its free cash flow to stockholders through stock repurchases and dividends.