and CR-V.



Capital Return to Shareholders



During fiscal year 2015, we repurchased 44.4 million shares of our common stock for $813.6 million and paid $186.5 million in cash dividends. As a result, we returned $1.00 billion to shareholders during fiscal year 2015 in the form of share repurchases and dividend payments.



On November 6, 2014 we announced our intention to return approximately $600.0 million to our shareholders in fiscal year 2016 through a combination of share repurchases and cash dividends. On February 11, 2015, we declared that we would pay our next quarterly cash dividend of $0.085 per share on March 19, 2015, to all shareholders of record on February 26, 2015.



Please refer to Note 14 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further discussion.



Litigation



In September 2014, we filed lawsuits against Qualcomm, Inc. and various Samsung entities in the United States International Trade Commission, or ITC, and the United States District Court for the District of Delaware for using our GPU patents without a license. On November 10, 2014, Samsung filed a complaint against NVIDIA and Velocity Micro, Inc., in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The complaint alleges that NVIDIA infringed six patents and falsely advertised that the Tegra K1 processor is the world’s fastest mobile processor. On December 19, 2014, Samsung filed an amended, longer complaint but asserting the same claims against NVIDIA.



Please refer to Note 12 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further discussion.

Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates



Management’s discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations are based upon our consolidated financial statements, which have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States, or U.S. GAAP. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and judgments that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, cost of revenue, expenses and related disclosure of contingencies. On an on-going basis, we evaluate our estimates, including those related to revenue recognition, inventories, income taxes, goodwill, cash equivalents and marketable securities, stock-based compensation, and litigation, investigation and settlement costs and other contingencies. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that are believed to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets and liabilities.



We believe the following critical accounting policies affect our significant judgments and estimates used in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements. Our management has discussed the development and selection of these critical accounting policies and estimates with the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors. The Audit Committee has reviewed our disclosures relating to our critical accounting policies