The problem has been eating Apple for quite some time with the new Apple CEO telling shareholders in February: “Frankly speaking, it’s more than we need to run the company.”
This simple comment sent the market into speculation with rumors of a buyback and the stock spiraling up and reaching $600 per share, leaving the company with a market value of about $546 billion with the market closing on Friday.
The problem of deciding on what to do with the cash mountain that keeps growing is making Apple chiefs lose sleep. Apple has already issued a press release saying that it would hold a conference call on Monday to discuss what to do with its cash balances.
The Apple CEO had also commented recently on the problem and remarked that he had been “thinking very deeply,” about demands that Apple return some of the cash to shareholders through means like dividends.
This apparently concerned comment, again, set speculators to “thinking deeply” on their part, and keep on raising the stock of Apple.
While Apple has not been forthcoming with any definite clue, the mountain of cash has been dangling on the minds of shareholders and conscience of people who claim some of that cash could recharge the economy, rather than remaining stagnant within corporate coffers.
But again, the Apple CEO, Tim Cook, indicated that at top levels of Apple they were having “active discussions” about what to do with so much money, – leading Apple shares become hyperactive.
There is no sign yet that any return of cash to shareholders would happen overnight, but Tim Cook sure knows how to milk the stock market by fondling the future.
In an economy, where people are dying to keep paying mortgages, we also have those who don’t know what to do with $98 billion cash, except that it must be withheld from the economy until the indecision ends.