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Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

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Re: Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

#161

Post by ceejayoz »

marbletiles wrote: post #63
programminggeek wrote: post #47

I hate to say this is a bad idea, but dividends signal to the market that you have no better way to spend your money than just giving it back to investors to spend elsewhere. Combining a stock buyback plan is smart at least because perhaps they can balance the two and counteract the dividend effect by buying up shares. In reality Apple could probably just become a private company by buying back most/all the public sh…

"In reality Apple could probably just become a private company by buying back most/all the public shares, but I doubt they want to do that." They can't use the shareholders' money (which is what this is) to take themselves private. You can't buy something from someone with their own money. EDIT: Any of these downvoters care to explain themselves? Apple can't buy back most/all of the public shares using this pile of c…

A public offering is the company saying "here is ownership in exchange for your money". A share buyback is the company saying "here is money in exchange for your ownership."

You're getting downvoted because it doesn't make sense for a company to be able to move in one direction, but not the other.

Re: Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

#162

Post by maaku »

aero142 wrote: post #158
philwelch wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without either dividends or a stock buyback plan, stocks are no more an investment than baseball cards. The point of not paying dividends is so you can reinvest your cash to increase the dividends you can pay later, and Apple's dividend is so low that they're clearly planning to reinvest the vast majority of their cash even with these dividends. I don't get the criticism that Apple has no better way to spend its mone…

When I collect all of the Tops '88 baseball cards, I don't suddenly own the NY Yankees. Stocks have fundamental value beyond novelty.

Unless you are a significant shareholder, your "fundamental value" is lost in the noise.

Re: Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

#163

Post by ajross »

ma2rten wrote: post #155
ajross wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixar didn't enjoy iPhone-like profitability ( edit: that's not the same as revenue, everyone knows that, right? ). And the reason is that it had very successful competitors. The Mac likewise. That's not good enough. Apple investors can make their own decisions about buying into new products like that. The GP post was implying that the "leadership team" was likely to do better. My point is that (1) no, they really ca…

> Pixar didn't enjoy iPhone-like profitability. You can't really compare iPhone and Pixar that way. IPhone was a product by an established company that was already producing the iPod. Pixar on the other hand was a startup (sort of), which Steve Jobs invested $10 million in and sold for $7.4 billion, quite an impressive return on investment.

This completely misses the point (or rather: completely confirms what I'm saying). The question at hand is "What should Apple do with $100e9US". What relevance does an investment of 0.01% of that total have, even if they could get that RoI on demand. With (pinky to mouth) One Hundred Billion Dollars you need to be aiming much, much higher. And they aren't. And even if they could they're just a bunch of Jobs-less yahoos playing with cash that landed in their laps. Be honest: they aren't going to create ten thousand Pixars with that money, they'll be lucky to get five. And they can fund five (or fifty) on existing revenue without the cash reserves.

Give it back.

Re: Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

#164

Post by stevewilhelm »

njharman wrote: post #91
namsral wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the market cap on that company would be > $X. Market cap != Value assets The 550B market cap is the value of all outstanding shares of the company which is not equal to value of the combined assets like buildings and $$.

So? To "make company private" you have to buy the outstanding shares. 550B+

Yes, at a premium. For example Alibaba announced last month it would buy back its shares at a 46% premium.

Re: Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

#165

Post by stephengoodwin »

ajross wrote: post #92
funkah wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate to say this is a bad idea, but dividends signal to the market that you have no better way to spend your money than just giving it back to investors to spend elsewhere. The ever-present notion that the leadership team of what is now one of the largest companies in the world has no real idea what they are doing is fascinating to me. Perhaps they deserve a bit of credit.

They're riding a hit. I know this borders on heresy here, but the iPhone/iPad ecosystem is really just one very good product that hit an amazingly lucrative sweet spot in an emerging market. They're printing money with it because they got there first and best (c.f. Microsoft), not because their "leadership team" is reliably able to produce hit after hit. Even Jobs only really got one money-printing-quality hit like t…

Although I do not completely disagree with you, Apple's leadership team has reliably produced hit after hit in the last 10 years: iPods, iTunes, Macbooks, iPhones, iPads, app store, etc. That doesn't mean this success will go on forever, but right now, Apple is batting pretty well.

Re: Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

#166

Post by maaku »

_delirium wrote: post #59
InclinedPlane wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The board aren't the owners, they're just the board, the owners are the share holders. The company literally belongs to them, as does this money.

That's true, but the shareholders have delegated the decision on how to spend the money to their legal representatives on the board. There's a strong presumption that the shareholders have elected board members whose decisions they support, so if the board makes decisions and the shareholders don't vote them out, those are presumed to express the preferences of the shareholders. Note that those decisions do not have…

Board members and executives have a fiduciary duty. Executives and board members who knowingly and willfully undertake actions that decrease the value of the company can be held personally (financially) responsible for those actions. (That's why you purchase director's and officer's liability insurance.)

Re: Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

#167

Post by [deleted] »

ajross wrote: post #163
ma2rten wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pixar didn't enjoy iPhone-like profitability. You can't really compare iPhone and Pixar that way. IPhone was a product by an established company that was already producing the iPod. Pixar on the other hand was a startup (sort of), which Steve Jobs invested $10 million in and sold for $7.4 billion, quite an impressive return on investment.

This completely misses the point (or rather: completely confirms what I'm saying). The question at hand is "What should Apple do with $100e9US". What relevance does an investment of 0.01% of that total have, even if they could get that RoI on demand. With (pinky to mouth) One Hundred Billion Dollars you need to be aiming much, much higher. And they aren't. And even if they could they're just a bunch of Jobs-less yaho…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

#168

Post by bgramer »

brudgers wrote: post #144
wisty wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Siri? The iPhone was the next step in omnipresent computing. You always have your iPhone. It's two steps down from laptops (leap-frogging the tablet, which has come after the iPhone). The next step is either glasses with computer screens (kind of geeky), or voice-interface computers. With a voice interface, you can shrink a computer down to the size of a wristwatch. Getting data out is a problem (display gl…

My understanding is that Apple bought the technology for Siri rather than developing it in house.

They may have bought the technology but they definitely improved on it across the board while integrating it into iOS.

Re: Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

#169

Post by ceejayoz »

ajross wrote: post #163
ma2rten wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pixar didn't enjoy iPhone-like profitability. You can't really compare iPhone and Pixar that way. IPhone was a product by an established company that was already producing the iPod. Pixar on the other hand was a startup (sort of), which Steve Jobs invested $10 million in and sold for $7.4 billion, quite an impressive return on investment.

This completely misses the point (or rather: completely confirms what I'm saying). The question at hand is "What should Apple do with $100e9US". What relevance does an investment of 0.01% of that total have, even if they could get that RoI on demand. With (pinky to mouth) One Hundred Billion Dollars you need to be aiming much, much higher. And they aren't. And even if they could they're just a bunch of Jobs-less yaho…

What's with this idea that they have to pick one and only one thing to do with a hundred billion dollars? What's with this idea that they should spend it all so they don't have any reserves?

Re: Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

#170

Post by [deleted] »

aero142 wrote: post #158
philwelch wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without either dividends or a stock buyback plan, stocks are no more an investment than baseball cards. The point of not paying dividends is so you can reinvest your cash to increase the dividends you can pay later, and Apple's dividend is so low that they're clearly planning to reinvest the vast majority of their cash even with these dividends. I don't get the criticism that Apple has no better way to spend its mone…

When I collect all of the Tops '88 baseball cards, I don't suddenly own the NY Yankees. Stocks have fundamental value beyond novelty.

[deleted]
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