“Apple wants to keep buying back stock and may increase its dividend,” Maureen Farrell reports for The Wall Street Journal. “The iPad maker just doesn’t want to do it on Carl Icahn‘s timetable.”
“Robert Cihra, an analyst at Evercore, notes that the bigger question facing Apple in 2014 is not how much to give back to shareholders but how to tap its overseas cash hoard without triggering outsize tax penalties,” Farrell reports. “Mr. Cihra estimates that Apple will burn through its cash located in U.S. banks by mid 2014. After that the company will be forced to decide whether to repatriate the rest and pay the taxes on it or raise more debt. Mr. Cihra expects the company to do the latter.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple urges shareholders vote against Icahn buyback proposal – December 27, 2013
Apple urgently needs increase debt to raise earnings per share by 13.8% – November 22, 2013
RBC sees room for Apple to take on another $55 billion in debt – August 15, 2013
Apple CEO Cook makes no apology for company’s tax strategy – May 22, 2013
Hey iCahn’,
Apple marches to it’s own drummer, get it?
As AAPL goes higher, doing more stock buybacks makes less and less sense. It made a lot of sense when AAPL was below $400. Icahn is just making noise for the media and investors, to make AAPL go higher on speculation that Apple “might” do some more stock buybacks (with the “$50B” price tag for emphasis). That’s why his proposal is “non-binding,” meaning even if it passed, it’s just “advice.”
Whether Apple does it or not is actually mostly irrelevant, because the “possibility” of more stock buybacks is just as good as the actual action. Once AAPL goes over $600, I don’t think there is a “timetable,” period…
Apple won’t burn through its cash by mid-2014, no way, no how. Apple makes too much money for that to happen. Besides, the money held overseas is what most likely pays Foxconn to build products and to by those magic things inside of Apple devices.
The WSJ needs to bring back old what’s his name.