“At a meeting with Apple Inc. finance chief Peter Oppenheimer this year, investor Kishore Rao asked the company to tap its billions in cash to pay a dividend,” Ari Levy and Adam Satariano report for Bloomberg.
“Oppenheimer had heard the request before and explained that Apple is keeping its powder dry for ‘strategic opportunities,’ without elaborating on what those could be, Rao said,” Levy and Satariano report. “The stock had almost doubled in the year before that meeting, and Oppenheimer argued Apple has been a good steward of its cash and investments, currently worth $76.2 billion.”
“The drumbeat to open that treasure chest may now grow louder following the Oct. 5 death of Steve Jobs, Apple’s former chief executive officer. Jobs, who rescued Apple from near- bankruptcy and turned it into the most valuable technology company, engendered faith in his insistence on hoarding cash. In his absence, as the stockpile grows, Oppenheimer faces renewed calls to fund a dividend or stock buyback,” Levy and Satariano report. ‘They don’t need all that cash,’ said Keith Goddard, CEO of Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Capital Advisors Inc., whose largest holding is Apple. ‘It won’t change their growth rate to pay a dividend.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bleat, bleat, bleat go the sheep.
Related articles:
Apple’s war chest: Rethinking the theory that cash is a burden – July 8, 2011
Some shareholders press for Apple dividend, buybacks – January 18, 2011
Toni Sacconaghi keeps whining for Apple to execute stock buyback or pay dividend – December 8, 2010
Fogetaboutit !!!
Voted on – dismissed.
Yeah, plus Apple has plans. It’s saving up to buy Microsoft.
I did get a dividend. A 2000% dividend. Did they somehow miss out?
You are right on the money! It’s not enough for these greedy Wall Street “investors” to have earned an unimaginable factor in AAPL over their original investment, but they want to paid for the privilege of earning money on top of it. Thank God Apple doesn’t capitulate to the whims of the whiny marketplace… And thank God Uncle Sam can’t make them do it (yet), because you know he would if he could.
These are short-term Wall Street type of investors of Apple’s stock. They went in and out at their whims and fancy and speculate for their own advantage. To accommodate their wishes would be very unfair to long-term investors. Apple is right to ignore such opportunists to protect the interests of long-term investors who believe in Apple.
Horse hockey. A stock buyback is always an utter waste of cash that only serves to enrich the Wall Street speculator class who have managed to drive our country into the ground in the past few years.
A dividend on the other hand immensely helps smaller, long-term investors, people like most of the posters here who own APPL, by allowing them to realize continual earnings on their investment over the long haul and not just on the date they sell their stock.
If I had been lucky enough to buy 100 shares in 1998 at $2 a pop, on paper my $200 would now be worth <$40k, which sound great, but in that period of time all I had done was accumulate paper wealth, paper wealth that could be back at $2/share by the time I retire. OTOH if Apple had paid dividends during that time, my initial investment could have been repaid over and over earning real wealth regardless of what the actual share price is. Now those dividends could be used to buy more APPL, other stock, bonds or other savings instruments, or just be spent on frivolous stuff, but whatever I use them for the dividends ensure that investors, as opposed to speculators, actually earn money.
Now, do I think Apple just pay all of its cash out as a dividend? No. But if Apple paid out regular quarterly dividends at the same rate as, say, AT&T which pays 43¢ per share per quarter, times 927m outstanding shares meaning that Apple would pay a dividend to its shareholders (you know the people who legally actually own the company) of $450m per quarter. That's not even a drop in the bucket compared to Apple's earnings.
It’s amazing to me that these business types can praise Apple’s business acumen and yet turn around and second guess the policies that have gotten the company to where it is today. Do they really think these things are completely uncoupled?
Keep in mind that financial institutions make fees off of dividend distributions and share buybacks. These big banks just want to make some money.
Don’t listen to them!
You would think that any investor with common sense in his head, would look at Apple’s success and realize their current formula works very well.
Why should they change it?
….
Honestly people. I know you want to see a return on your investment. But with the country in a financial mess, please understand Apple has a very large cushion. Until things settle down financially we won’t see anything… if at all.
If you area dissatisfied about the dividends please take your money and invest in something with more returns.
But I am perfectly fine investing in something big and stable with out getting a ton back. Because when the s**t hits the fan, Apple will be fine way longer than anyone else.
sudo killall rant
sudo killall rant
Major geek points there!
Agreed! Nice!
+1
wtf… A man (and not just any man) dies and these people want to get paid?
Crass.
it’s going to take a lot of cash to get the mothership beyond Earth’s atmosphere, let alone to the .next nearest habitable planet. These people are simply not thinking clearly.
I do wish I could up vote that comment!
I think you meant “NeXT nearest…” lol.
Kieth Goddard and all the Other brokers out there need to stop giving their overvalued 2 cents. Apple didn’t achieve what it has listeningto the cries for the blood of the golden goose. If they can do better they should start their own company.
Q. What does the U.S. and Apple Inc. have in common?
A. Neither have Jobs!
I find this in poor taste given that Apple has been one of the few American corporations adding people to their payroll since the downturn began. Not only that, but your moniker makes it sound as though you’re happy about the current state of affairs, whether it be in regard to jobs, or to Jobs.
Keep beating those drums – it won’t do you any good.
“‘They don’t need all that cash,’ said Keith Goddard, CEO of Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Capital Advisors Inc., whose largest holding is Apple. ‘It won’t change their growth rate to pay a dividend.'”
1. No-one knows what the future will bring, and whether Apple will need that cash or not.
2. There has never been a promise of a dividend. Goddard’s comments are the equivalent of a well-fed business person standing on the street corner in a Brooks Brothers suit, asking passersby for a hand-out, and whining when he gets strange looks.
3. I believe that Goddard is free to divest from Apple at any time.
Shareholders can be miserable greedy beggars. It isn’t enough for them that Apple stock has risen from $13 a share to almost $400. They want more. My message to whining Apple shareholders: STFU!
You really don’t get mich do you? It’s nOt the real shareholders, but the greedy hedge funds and institutional ones that want the dividends omidansky
The only people banging this drum are the corporate investors who stand to receive billions from even a small dividend.
Extremely greedy and shortsighted. They have no care about the long term health in the company, if they get their bonus, they’re happy no matter what happens to Apple. Now is not the time to pay a dividend, now is the time to invest in the future and to save for the rainy day that these short sighted schmucks are busy creating.
Hmmm… pundits from an industry that can’t even run itself have the audacity to tell Apple, the most successful corporation on Earth how it should conduct business.
I think not. Tim, stay the course.
;-P
Oh yeah I can see that… because the trajectory of the company under the current scheme has been so lackluster. Not!
It’s perfectly alright for investors and shareholders to ask for a dividend, and it’s perfectly alright for Apple to say “no”.
Personally, I think Apple will do something with all that cash, but it’ll be after a couple things: one, after a decision is made about taxation on the repatriation of foreign profits; and two, on any tax reform. About 2/3rds of Apple’s cash is held in foreign subsidiaries, so tax treatment is crucial. Apple’s domestic cash is a much smaller number and a reasonable amount for its current purposes.
Ridiculous.
I’d rather see a stock split. Maybe 10 for 1?
No dividend. OK.
No stock buy-back. OK.
Then how about a 10-to-1 split?
Many folks I know say “It’s too expensive” when I make the suggestion they invest in AAPL. I know it doesn’t matter if you buy 1 share for $400 or 10 shares for $40 each, but to a lot of people, it DOES matter.
the problem is that the kind of people who it matters to, are the kind of people who panic and sell at the drop of a hat when they read a headline (latest iPhone is a miss) or listen to a cabbie (Android is leading iPhone 2 to 1), and don’t pause and try to understand what’s really going on.
I’m a lon time shareholder and I say “Mind your own business you clueless idiots.”
missed the “g” long time shareholder
I would NEVER pay a dividend until the world economy stabilizes … which could be another five years if not longer. Cash is king and Apple has the most!