“When technology giant Apple reports its fiscal second quarter earnings either in late April or early May, perhaps the biggest news for some investors won’t be the company’s results,” Bill Maurer writes for Seeking Alpha. “It’s this report each year where management announces its update for the company’s massive capital return plan, which usually means an increase to both the share repurchase program as well as the quarterly dividend.”
“When it came to last year’s dividend projection, I figured we’d see an increase in the teens, percentage wise. Apple did, in fact, come in the middle of my range, with a 15.9% increase to $0.73 per share,” Maurer writes. “Management decided to step up big time when it came to the buyback. After two fiscal years where no more than $11 billion per quarter was spent on the buyback, thanks to higher tax rates and much of the cash located outside the US, Apple spent at least $19 billion per quarter in three of the four 2018 calendar quarters. The company also didn’t have to take out more debt to facilitate the plan.”
“Even with all of those share repurchases and dividend payments, Apple still had $130 billion in net cash left on the balance sheet at the end of the latest quarter,” Maurer writes. “I believe investors looking at Apple’s potential dividend hike this year will be pretty happy. While some softness in current quarter results may hamper cash flow generation a little this year, Apple still will produce a tremendous amount of cash and the balance sheet remains second to none. With last year’s buyback bringing the share count down by more than 7%, it would not surprise me to see a larger percentage raise than we saw in 2018. As a result, an increase that approaches 20% could be in the cards.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 20% would be a nice little raise for AAPL investors, especially those who rode the roller coaster of the last 6 months.
last year, i think the rather strong raise came in part from the tax cuts. That part of a raise won’t happen again, I expect less than 15%, more like 10%, my bet is on $0.81.
That’s your guess? The yearly payout now is $2.92. You think it will increase by 10%. That would be $0.292. Where do you get $0.81?
Probably means the quarterly dividend goes up from .73 to .81
You are talking the yearly and he is showing the quarterly
I will take whatever they decide to give me.
Why such a negative rating to my comment? 🙂
I own only 500 AAPL stocks, clearly no power to influence board decision. Whatever is transferred to me in May and after is what it is. Will not send it back. Probably re-invest.
Why the negative? Because there are several snivvling, whiny little trolls who infest these pages… who downvote anything except each other’s whining.
I always give myself a 5 star rating, right out of the gate.
I would like it but doubt they will do more than the standard 5% increase.
Since 2014 the yearly increase has been about 10% but last year it was about 15%. The board usually announces this in May. We’ll see what they do soon enough.
How do you figure 5% is the ‘standard increase’ ??
He’s one of those guys, like samlowry above, who really don’t follow this, and have no idea what’s going on, but want to sound like they do.
The problem is that they’re too lazy to look it up before commenting.
Reinvest at no cost and forget about it and watch it compound over the years