Apple's market cap tops $300 billion

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/03/apples-market-cap-tops-300-billion/

by bvi • 16 years ago

48 25 16 years ago

tech.fortune.cnn.com

kmfrk2• 16 years ago

Do Apple still have the problem of not knowing what to do with all their money? I recall they had an absurd amount of money lying around that they needed to invest to get some decent returns on.

protomyth2• 16 years ago

They've said on various finance calls that they want it available to make some large acquisitions and do the big parts contracts.

kmfrk2• 16 years ago

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I just recall reading articles that made it sound like executives or board members were tearing their hair because of it. Must have been the journalists' mistake.

jonknee3• 16 years ago

They have $25B in cash or short term investments sitting around ($11B in cash or equivalents): http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL&fstype=ii

They have invested pretty heavily in facilities/equipment, growing from $2.8B to $7.2B over the past four years. I'd imagine that's stuff like their giant new data center and partnership agreements in their Asian operations. Where they really bulked up is "Long Term Investments". None four years ago, $25B today (and just $10B last year). Unsure what that would entail...

czhiddy• 16 years ago

I think they have closer to 50B in the bank. They were definitely north of 40 all of last year.

trotsky• 16 years ago

Long term investments is more or less anything that they intend to hold for more than a year, including equity stakes in other companies. With their continuing large cash position, large cash inflows and quick accumulation in the category it's possible that they've been buying a combination of junk and t-bills.

mcknz• 16 years ago

Microsoft had a similar problem, but they solved it by creating an Online Services Division.

jsm3862• 16 years ago

Online Services has consistently lost money but their solution was a one-time dividend of $3/share to all shareholders or $32 billion dollars.

ThomPete• 16 years ago

Do as Richard Branson said when asked how to become a millionaire

"Start with a billion, then start an airline company"

sbisker• 16 years ago

I'm not sure what they'd need the higher returns for; it's not like their investors are clamoring for higher dividends. It wouldn't shock me if Apple's policy of not paying cash dividends (in place since 1995) remains only to spite Michael Dell - but it seems unlikely that the policy will change any time soon, and investors seem fine with that.

Given that, it's probably in their best interest to keep most of it fairly liquid so they can move on product ideas and acquisitions.

J3L2404• 16 years ago

Probably just a fad. ;)

eddieplan9• 16 years ago

Irrelevant, but do you think Facebook is worth 1/6 of Apple?

tptacek• 16 years ago

Paraphrasing Joel Spolsky, every time Facebook figures out a way to make 10 additional pennies from each of its users, it adds a recurring $50MM income to its cash flow. These are apples/oranges comparisons, but Facebook is worth a lot.

revorad• 16 years ago

Let's do some math based on numbers usually reported:

total users 600,000,000

daily visitors 300,000,000

annual revenue $2,000,000,000

average daily revenue $5,479,452

average daily revenue per visitor $0.02

So, unless I've made some serious order of magnitude error, on average they make 2 cents per visitor everyday. Maybe they can make a lot more than 10 additional cents per user per year.

Apple's market cap tops $300 billion

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