Quote:
Originally Posted by frahse
I saw where Apple's pile of cash offshore had dropped to about 300B. But I don't know when that "tally" was made.
OK here is that link: Apple's cash hoard falls to $267.2 billion
Steve (and I) believe that the stockpile of cash from profits is to make newer and better products, to provide better service, to increase your competitive edge. To drive the weak out of the business!
Buffet believes in deep moats full of alligators around your enterprise.
You can dig a bery deep and broad moat and buy a lot of Gators for 100B. Hey, Hey! |
It's been a while since they were over 300B. Part of the point of the changes in the tax law last year was to allow companies to bring back those funds sitting overseas and spend it.
I would rather see Apple spend it on new product development than investor payoffs. One of the big differences between Jobs and Cook is that Jobs was very focused on developing high quality products, while Cook is more of a inventory/investor sort of guy. It's not all that unusual for this sort of thing to happen when you shift from a founder with a vision to a non vision guy. Amazon is famous for plowing money back into the company rather than making big investor payoffs, though I think that is starting to change a bit.