After being nagged about it for years by Wall Street, Apple on Monday said it has decided to cut into its significant cash reserves by offering a dividend to stockholders. A dividend of $ 2.65 per share will be distributed each quarter, starting with the company’s fourth fiscal quarter of 2012, July 1.
Apple will also spend $ 10 billion of its nearly $ 100 billion in cash to repurchase shares of its stock over a period of three years, which is currently priced at $ 585.57 per share. That will begin with the company’s 2013 fiscal year, which is September 30, 2012. The purpose of that is to, neutralize ”the impact of dilution from future employee equity grants and employee stock purchase programs,” Apple said in a press release Monday morning.
We have 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.
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