“Apple’s cash and cash equivalent balance has continued to go up,” Puneet Sikka reports for Market Realist. “Apple’s cash and cash equivalent balance has increased from $137 billion in the fiscal first quarter of 2013 to $164 billion in the latest fiscal third quarter of 2014.”
“Interestingly, Apple has already taken action on $74 billion of the $130 billion capital return program, including $51 billion in share repurchases,” Sikka reports. “This program will be completed in another six quarters.”
“During the last quarter, Apple repurchased 59 million of Apple shares in the open market for $5 billion. The company also paid $2.9 billion in dividends,” Sikka reports. “Apple made a comparatively big acquisition in the last quarter—Beats Electronics and Beats Music for $3 billion. In fact, this was the largest acquisition in Apple’s history, easily beating the $400 million acquisition of NeXT Software in 1997. Besides Beats, Apple made 29 acquisitions since the beginning of the 2013 fiscal year, including five acquisitions in the last quarter. However, these were smaller acquisitions, which aren’t hurting Apple’s cash balance.”
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