Qualcomm announced that its board has approved a 14% increase in the company’s quarterly cash dividend. Dividends will increase from 14 cents to 16 cents per share of common stock and will be effective for quarterly dividends payable after March 28, 2008. This dividend increase raises the annual dividend to 64 cents per share of common stock.
The company also announced that its board has approved a new $2 billion stock repurchase program, effective immediately, to replace its previous $3 billion stock repurchase program.
“We are pleased to increase our cash dividend and expand our stock repurchase program,” said Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, in a statement. “We continue to execute on our strategic objectives, driving strong operating cash flows and enabling us to return capital to stockholders through stock repurchases and dividends.”
Since these programs began in 2003, Qualcomm says it has returned $8.5 billion to stockholders through stock repurchases and cash dividends.
The San Diego-based tech company also announced that it has acquired Irish mobile advertising firm Xiam Technologies. According to Qualcomm, Xiam’s MPOS technology enables mobile operators to make personalized recommendations to individual consumers tailored to their unique tastes and preferences. MPOS also leverages demographic, contextual and behavioral profiling to enable one-to-one mobile advertising.
Qualcomm says that it plans to continue offering MPOS through Xiam as a wholly-owned subsidiary. The company says it expects to pay about $32 million for the acquisition.
