“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.
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