Qualcomm Hikes Dividend Ahead of Q2 Earnings
It’s that time of the year, and Qualcomm is raising its dividend in an effort to return more capital to shareholders.
It’s that time of the year, and Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) is raising its dividend in an effort to return more capital to shareholders. The company announced that the board of directors has approved a 10% increase in the quarterly cash dividend.
The quarterly cash dividend will increase from $0.48 to $0.53 per share of common stock and will be effective for quarterly dividends payable after March 23, 2016. This dividend increase will raise the annualized dividend payout to $2.12 per share of common stock.
At the current price level, this would bring the total dividend yield to nearly 4% on an annualized basis. The dividend payout ratio would also be in the area of 52%, compared to current EPS estimates for the fiscal 2016 year.
At this time last year, the company hiked its dividend by 14%, but this would only put the annual yield at 2.6%.
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Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm, commented:
Over the last several years, we have invested aggressively in our technology roadmap and returned substantial capital to stockholders as part of a balanced capital allocation strategy. The dividend increase announced today reflects both the strength of our ongoing cash flows, as well as our confidence that our investments have created a strong foundation for future earnings growth.
So far in 2016, Qualcomm has outperformed the broad markets, with the stock up 7.6%. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock is actually down about 23%.
Shares of Qualcomm closed Monday up 1.2% at $53.30, with a consensus analyst price target of $57.55 and a 52-week trading range of $42.24 to $74.09.
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Chris Lange is a financial and geopolitical writer with more than a decade of experience covering a myriad of topics. He has published thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St., with past coverage focused heavily on stocks, IPOs, healthcare, defense, global affairs, and technology.
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