Business Day, Foreign Staff: Technology company sets quarterly dividend of $2,65 a share, says it will buy back $10bn of stock from 2013, APPLE, the world’s most valuable company, said on Monday it would initiate a regular quarterly dividend of $2,65 a share in July and buy back up to $10bn of its stock starting in fiscal 2013. The share-buyback programme is expected to be executed over three years, with the primary objective of offsetting the impact of employee stock options and equity grants. "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,’ said Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, in a statement. "You’ll see more of all of these in the future." Mr Cook said the company would still maintain a "war chest" for other strategic opportunities. Apple anticipates using about $45bn of domestic cash in the first three years of its buyback and dividend programmes. The maker of the iPhone, iPad and iPod has $98bn in cash and securities, equal to about $104 a share, according to Brian Marshall , analyst at ISI Group. Apple last paid a dividend in 1995, Thomson Reuters data show. In 1996, it posted a net loss of $816m. "Apple is an overcapitalised company and it’s probably better to have the cash in the shareholders’ pockets than in Apple’s pockets," said John Strand, CEO of Copenhagen-based Strand Consulting. Apple shares were up by 1% in premarket trading on Monday after being halted earlier in the morning. "For a lot of people who own this stock, some dividend is better than no dividend," said Colin Gillis, analyst at BCG Partners. Source: BusinessDay
