STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY

3 Months Ended

Aug. 31, 2015

Stockholders' Equity [Abstract]

STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY

9.  STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY

Common Stock Repurchases

Our Board of Directors has approved a program for us to repurchase shares of our common stock.Approximately $6.2 billion remained available for stock repurchases as of August 31, 2015, pursuant to our stock repurchase program. We repurchased 75.7 million shares for $3.0 billion during the three months ended August 31, 2015 (including 5.0 million shares for $185 million that were repurchased but not settled) and 48.8 million shares for $2.0 billion during the three months ended August 31, 2014 under the stock repurchase program.

Our stock repurchase authorization does not have an expiration date and the pace of our repurchase activity will depend on factors such as our working capital needs, our cash requirements for acquisitions and dividend payments, our debt repayment obligations or repurchase of our debt, our stock price, and economic and market conditions. Our stock repurchases may be effected from time to time through open market purchases or pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 plan. Our stock repurchase program may be accelerated, suspended, delayed or discontinued at any time.

Dividends on Common Stock

During the first quarter of fiscal 2016, our Board of Directors declared cash dividends of $0.15 per share of our outstanding common stock, which we paid during the same period.

In September 2015, our Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.15 per share of our outstanding common stock. The dividend is payable on October 28, 2015 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on October 14, 2015. Future declarations of dividends and the establishment of future record and payment dates are subject to the final determination of our Board of Directors.

Stock-Based Compensation Expense and Valuations of Stock Awards

During the first quarter of fiscal 2016, we issued 24 million stock options and 28 million restricted stock-based awards (consisting of 26 million service-based restricted stock units (RSUs) and 2 million performance-based restricted stock units (PSUs)). Substantially all of the awards were issued as a part of our annual stock-based award process and are subject to service-based vesting restrictions, with the PSUs also having performance-based vesting restrictions, that are of a similar nature to those described in Note 14 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2015. Approximately 7 million of the 24 million stock options granted during the first quarter of fiscal 2016 were to our Chief Executive Officers and Chief Technology Officer and had contractual lives of 5 years in comparison to the 10 year contractual lives for the other stock options granted. Our 2016 stock-based award issuances were partially offset by forfeitures and cancellations of 4 million shares during the first quarter of fiscal 2016.

Stock-based compensation expense is included in the following operating expense line items in our condensed consolidated statements of operations:

	Three Months Ended August 31,
(in millions)	2015		2014
Sales and marketing	$	51	$	43
Cloud software as a service and platform as a service		4		2
Cloud infrastructure as a service		1		1
Software license updates and product support		6		5
Hardware products		2		1
Hardware support		1		1
Services		8		6
Research and development		148		108
General and administrative		29		45
Acquisition related and other		3		3
Total stock-based compensation	$	253	$	215