“The three-year anniversary of Apple’s announcement of a record capital return program is approaching in April, and one analyst believes the cash juggernaut will mark that occasion with a new $200 billion program to buy back shares and raise its dividend,” John Melloy reports for CNBC.
“Kulbinder Garcha of Credit Suisse upgraded the stock to ‘outperform’ from ‘neutral’ Tuesday because of this expected announcement, seeing the shares 19 percent higher over the next 12 months from Monday’s closing price,” Melloy reports. “The analyst points out that Apple has more cash on hand than it had when the program began.”
Melloy reports, “‘We estimate that Apple’s net cash will be at $143 billion by April 2015 and as such, see it likely that management will do another increase in (an) upcoming announcement,’ Garcha wrote. ‘We now assume that Apple will announce a sizeable increase in its cash return program for the next 3 years through the end of 2017 to over $200 billion of which $165 billion will be buybacks and $37 billion will be dividends.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]