Apple will again come knocking on investors' doors to sell more debt after announcing on Monday that it has increased its share repurchase plan to $140 billion from $90 billion announced last year.

The tech giant said that, under its expanded return of capital to shareholder program, it will utilise a cumulative total of $200 billion of cash by the end of March 2017.

"The company plans to continue to access the domestic and international debt markets" to help pay for the program, Apple said in a release.

The announcement comes after Apple reported a 27 per cent surge in quarterly revenue in the first three months of this year.

Apple, the most valuable publicly traded US company, said net income rose to $13.57 billion, or $2.33 per share, from $10.22bn, or $1.66 per share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose to $58.01 billion in the second quarter ended March 28, from $45.65 billion a year earlier.

Apple has already issued $35.5 billion of bonds in the US dollar market since 2013 to pay for share buybacks and dividends, as part of efforts to stave off attacks from shareholder activists including David Einhorn.

Before its $17 billion bond debut in 2013, Apple had no debt at all on its books. It was last in the dollar market in February, with a larger-than-expected $6.5 billion bond.

"There will always be demand for Apple," one debt capital markets banker told IFR.

Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs have led all of the issuer's dollar bond deals, and some do not expect that to change.

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