OREANDA-NEWS. CN (TSX: CNR) (NYSE: CNI) announced today that its Board of Directors has approved a new share repurchase program. CN believes that the repurchase of its shares represents an appropriate and beneficial use of the Company's funds.

Luc Jobin, CN executive vice-president and chief financial officer, said: "Our record speaks for itself. We continue to invest significantly in the business while maintaining a focus on consistently enhancing shareholder returns by increasing dividends and repurchasing shares. Since its privatization, CN has increased its dividends per share by 16 per cent on average every year for 18 consecutive years and has created significant value for shareholders through regular share repurchases since its first buyback program in 2000."

Today, CN's Board of Directors authorized a new normal-course-issuer bid to purchase, for cancellation, up to 28 million common shares, representing 3.9 per cent of the 709,302,712 common shares issued and outstanding of the Company not held by insiders on Oct. 15, 2014. On that date, 814,717,092 CN common shares were issued and outstanding.

The new repurchase program - starting on Oct. 24, 2014, and ending no later than Oct. 23, 2015 - will be conducted through a combination of discretionary transactions and automatic repurchase plan through the facilities of the Toronto and New York stock exchanges, or alternative trading systems, if eligible, and will conform to their regulations. Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) rules will permit CN to purchase daily, through TSX facilities, a maximum of 256,297 common shares under the Company's new repurchase program. Purchases under the normal-course-issuer bid will be made by means of open market transactions or such other means as the TSX or a securities regulatory authority may permit, including private agreements under an issuer bid exemption order issued by securities regulatory authorities in Canada.

The price to be paid by CN for any common shares will be the market price at the time of acquisition, plus brokerage fees, and purchases made under an issuer bid exemption order will be at a discount to the prevailing market price as per the terms of the order.

CN repurchased 22.3 million common shares under its share repurchase program announced in October 2013, at a weighted-average price of CAD 62.87 per share, excluding brokerage fees, returning CAD 1.4 billion to shareholders.

CN also announced today that its Board of Directors has approved a fourth-quarter 2014 dividend on the Company's common shares outstanding. A quarterly dividend of twenty-five cents (CAD 0.25) per common share will be paid on Dec. 31, 2014, to shareholders of record at the close of business on Dec. 10, 2014.