“Despite the recent pickup in chatter about Apple’s growing ‘cash problem,’ it’s really not an issue at all,” Chris Ciaccia writes for TheStreet. “A balance sheet with more than $200 billion in cash on it (albeit one that now also has $60 billion in debt and climbing) is the envy of every non-financial company in the world. Every company out there dreams of having a problem like too much cash because consumers are buying so many of their products — in Apple’s case, iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, etc.”
“While there is a growing class of shareholders and pundits who want to see Apple do something big with its cash, such as buy Tesla or Time Warner’s HBO (or all of Time Warner) or some other company are missing the forest for the trees,” Ciaccia writes. “According to sources familiar with the company’s thinking, it’s highly unlikely Apple will ever do a large-scale acquisition for fear of operational and execution risk. Apple’s culture is so much different than most every company out there, including those in Silicon Valley, that bringing in potentially thousands of workers to the company through a big acquisition would be more destructive than whatever gain Apple could receive from the company it was buying.”
“Rome wasn’t built in a day. Many on Wall Street forget that, since almost everything revolves around the almighty quarterly cycle,” Ciaccia writes. “But 90 days or a year aren’t enough to judge a company; only decades are. And a balance sheet with $200 billion worth of cash on it really isn’t a problem at all.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple will buy Tesla for the same reason they bought Palm.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David E.” for the heads up.]