Apple’s $165 billion mountain of cash are again fueling speculation – Disney, again — that the world’s most valuable company should make a big acquisition.
Jeran Wittenstein and Ryan Vlastelica for Bloomberg:
Entertainment giant Walt Disney Co. recently joined a long list of potential acquisition targets that over the years has grown to include Netflix Inc., Tesla Inc., Peloton Interactive Inc. and Sonos Inc. They all have one thing in common: Anyone betting that Apple would buy them has so far been sorely disappointed.
“You’re probably missing the value of the business if you think the key catalyst for investment is a major acquisition,” said Kevin Walkush, portfolio manager at Jensen Investment Management. “It’s a low-probability bet.”
“Not doing a big deal hasn’t impacted them and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” said Gregg Abella, chief executive officer of Investment Partners Asset Management, which holds the stock. “I’m pleased that Apple has a lot of discipline in this regard.”
Apple’s biggest purchase in its history was the $3 billion takeover of Beats Music and Beats Electronics in 2014. Microsoft’s pending acquisition of video game maker Activision Blizzard is valued at $69 billion…
Instead of splurging on deals, Apple returns much of its excess cash to shareholders via share buybacks and dividends. Those expenditures totaled more than $100 billion in fiscal 2022 and it still had $165 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, as of Dec. 31.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote earlier this week, “Tim Cook has shown no appetite for mega acquisitions. Disney’s price tag would be at least $200 billion. Apple’s largest acquisition ever occurred in 2014, when the company acquired Beats Electronics for a mere $3 billion, a relatively paltry drop in the bucket (in Apple’s last-reported quarter, the company posted revenue of $117.2 billion. Apple’s revenue for calendar 2022 was $387.537 billion).”
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pay out larger dividend. stop wasting stockholder’s money.
MUCH larger dividend. Heck, how about a special dividend one time, or yearly? “giving back to shareholders” does not include repurchase of stock.
Pay a better damn dividend Cook. Stock repurchases suck donkey balls! All that gain from buying stock can be lost in a heartbeat if the fed screws up. Once I have dividends in my pocket, they are MINE. Only I can lose them, not the feckless moronic market.
PAY MORE DIVIDENDS!
Apple needs to invest in A.I. Nivida (who apple refuses to work with) is dominating A.I. hardware with dedicated solutions and Apple is focused only on mobile GPU designs that are low power, low energy that are so underpowered and thus they have no answer for enterprise A.I. Apple lacks true leadership in the greatest technology revolution in the history of mankind. This is what unqualified visionless leadership gets you; on the outside looking in. Apple needs a serious course correction or will quickly becoming the blackberry of A.I. in that they started in pole position but never made it out the gate. At least Microsoft had the instinct to invest in Open A.I. it will be telling if at the WWDC Apple continues that A.I. docent exist. The A.I. revolution is full steam ahead and the or MIA. If apple continues to ignore A.I. then smart stock holders should quietly start making their way to the exit door. At the current rate of A.I progress the technology software/hardware landscape will be totally transformed in 3 years. Dose Apple have a hidden master plan soon to be released or have they been caught sleeping at the wheel or chasing streaming content, EVs and similar things in an over crowded industry
Disney is a toxic woke s—-show. All their programs are woke crap. Retroactively, Luke skywaler is now gay. I cancelled Disney + and refuse to buy anything from Disney. I hope everyone there gets fire or the company burns to the ground. An evil grooming toxic company with no remaining value.
This month I signed up for Disney plus but canceled because simply the new content is just not interesting.The classic Pixar movies and a lot of the original Disney content is great but once you watch it and realize the new stuff even the new starwars universe stuff is dull and unwatchable. Disney has lost the art of story telling, its just flashy uninteresting nonsense or worse
I’d like to see Apple double-down on health care. Get a non-invasive, glucose-monitoring AppleWatch to market within a couple of years.
Apple screwed up with Rockley Photonics thinking they had a solution for optical glucose. Technology is available and ready. Only challenges are legal battles.
I don’t understand why Apple wastes money on stock buybacks. Seems to me treat your loyal shareholders to better dividends and treat your customers to superior products at lower prices in the short term.
In the long term acquisition of Disney would make sense by creating overnight the largest juggernaut of tech and entertainment in history!
Problem is, with a clueless one trick pony CEO, ALL profits ALL the time, Cook not a creative bone in his body would NOT WORK.
His senior executives are quitting working for Tim in record numbers never before seen in the history of Apple. Some products are released half baked like the HomePod, lagging Apple TV and confusing remote and soon rumored problems with AR glasses. Not to mention the phantom Apple Car 10 years in development, not ONE shipped.
It will take the woke SJW board to take off their dividend blinders and release one of their own. I don’t see it happening they don’t have the balls to return the company to CREATIVE GREATNESS and endure the Leftist, Media and LGBT backlash.
All the board cares about is making their penthouse payments, golden golf memberships, yacht slip fees and could not care less as Timmy is making them RICH.
All that said, HIRE creative no fear CEO with a pair, BUY Disney and “to the moon, Alice!”….
Bag_of_old_farts_ GoeB degasses again…trying to rid himself of his permanent rent free lodger TC!