Apple has finally decided to hand over $45 Billion in dividends from their stockpile of cash, they will also buy back $10 Billion of their own stock.
Despite these payments the Company will still have “War Chest” of billions with the Company predicting that they will make another $80 billion in profit during the next 12 months.
Early this morning Apple shares were up 2.4% in afternoon trading in New York at $599.80
The move comes after a recent board meeting and demands by investors that the Company starts dolling out some of the $100 Billion in cash they have under investment.
Overnight Apple said that it would issue its first dividend in more than a decade, paying $2.65 a share each quarter. The company also said it plans to buy back shares over the next three years, beginning Sept. 30, the start of its 2013 fiscal year.
Apple said that based on those metrics, it would spend about $45 billion of its domestic cash over the next three years.
“Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said on a conference call with analysts.
The move makes Apple one of the highest dividend Apple payers in the world.
“We want to maintain sufficient U.S. cash to be able to quickly take advantage of strategic opportunities that might present themselves, and we do not want to incur the tax cost to repatriate the foreign cash at this time,” Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said.
The big question for many is whether the dividend payback would have happened if Steve Jobs had been around.
