Apple Pays $2.5 Billion in Dividends to Shareholders

By Zak Islam
published

iPhone maker distributing $45 billion over next three years. You can thank Tim Cook for that.

Apple has paid its third dividend to shareholders, delivering about $2.5 billion at $2.65 per share across the iPhone maker's 939 million outstanding shares.

The company initially announced plans for its dividend program back in March, as well as a $10 billion share buyback program. It said that each quarter it would pay shareholders a $2.65 per share dividend, with this quarter's payment occurring on February 14.

CEO Tim Cook stated that Apple has "used some of our cash to make great investments in our business through increased research and development, acquisitions, new retail store openings, strategic prepayments and capital expenditures in our supply chain, and building out our infrastructure. You’ll see more of all of these in the future."

“Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business. So we are going to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program."

Over the next three years, Apple said its planned buyback and dividend plans will take $45 billion from its cash pile. During the fourth quarter of 2012, the firm said it made $16 billion in cash after which its cash pile increased to $137.1 billion. Consequently, Apple is the richest company on the planet.

Apple will continue to pay new quarterly dividends about six weeks after the end of each quarter. However, it has faced a lawsuit from a key shareholder who believes the company should share more of its cash, with Apple emphasizing that it's "evaluating" every possible option to do so.

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Zak Islam
14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • redeemer
    Shut up and Give Me the Money!
    Reply
  • Niva
    Actually not bad, based on today's closing price of ~$500 USD a quarterly dividend of 2.65 is about 2% return investment per year. I had missed the part that Apple even pays a dividend. That being said if it's really sitting on such a huge pile of cash it probably should be paying more.
    Reply
  • hate machine
    "Consequently, Apple is the richest company on the planet."

    Sorry, even if you do not count Saudi Oil kings which are rumoured to be worth in the trillions... Exxon has assets that totally eclipse Apple's. At the end of 2007 they had 72 billion oil-equivalent barrels and oil is very expensive. I will let you look up the pricing per barrel and do the math. Even then if you take a look at companies like Oracle and IBM with their IP and other assets they dwarf Apple's cash pile plus their assets.
    Reply
  • ta152h
    I don't know what the point of sitting on so much cash is, especially when interest rates are below inflation rates.

    Apple should do something useful with it, like buy Portugal.
    Reply
  • FFH
    I already forgot everything I learned in finance class. I do remember that sitting on a mountain of money isn't good. It has something to do with inflation, and in some cases it's better to leverage debt if you don't have money. I heard that 3M tries to make most of their profit from new products every 6-8 months. I don't get why Apple isn't using more money for R&D.
    Reply
  • crewton
    NivaActually not bad, based on today's closing price of ~$500 USD a quarterly dividend of 2.65 is about 2% return investment per year. I had missed the part that Apple even pays a dividend. That being said if it's really sitting on such a huge pile of cash it probably should be paying more.
    They made it 2.65 when the stock was closer to 700 a share...it was a pretty bad dividend that is only decent now that the stock has lost 30% of it's value. I'd rather have my shares be worth 700 with 0 dividend than 500 with a 2% dividend...
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    to stop them from dumping Apple stocks?
    Reply
  • kinggremlin
    hate machine"Consequently, Apple is the richest company on the planet."Sorry, even if you do not count Saudi Oil kings which are rumoured to be worth in the trillions... Exxon has assets that totally eclipse Apple's. At the end of 2007 they had 72 billion oil-equivalent barrels and oil is very expensive. I will let you look up the pricing per barrel and do the math. Even then if you take a look at companies like Oracle and IBM with their IP and other assets they dwarf Apple's cash pile plus their assets.
    When they say richest, in this case, they mean cash, not total assets. Oil is worth a lot, but only if someone is willing to pay for it, you can't buy things with oil.
    Reply
  • ien2222
    kinggremlinWhen they say richest, in this case, they mean cash, not total assets. Oil is worth a lot, but only if someone is willing to pay for it, you can't buy things with oil.
    Cash is only worth something if people place value on it, it's the same thing. And you can buy things with oil, it's called bartering.
    Reply
  • nurgletheunclean
    Nobody buys appl for the dividend. 2% yeald is right in line with other mega caps (crappy). Some top paying mega's would be astrazenica at 6.11% GlaxoSmithKline at 5.15% AT&T 5.08% Verizon 4.63% and Conoco Philips 4.5%.

    This is non-news, especially for TH.
    Reply