Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) is expected to reveal another substantial cash payout in this evening’s earnings call, with forecasters expecting the technology behemoth to match last year's announcement and declare a buyback of US$90bn £71.6bn)
Matching these forecasts will bring its expenditure on stock repurchases to over US$660bn in the past decade.
A staggering, even for Apple. Nevertheless, any potential criticism could be mollified by the fact that the company's stock is approaching its historical high, particularly as the valuations of other FAANG members have fallen.
American companies spent as much as US$1.25tn on buybacks, which are designed to return value to shareholders.
Such is the size of these buybacks that the US Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted amendments to modernise share buyback reporting requirements.
Putting the ethical debate around share buybacks aside, let’s see what could buy with US$90bn. Here’s a few options:
- Two Twitters!
- Mark Zuckerberg’s initial Horizon Worlds metaverse investment nine times over
- 18 of Apple’s own Spaceship campuses (having gone two billion over budget)
- 60 billion Costco (NASDAQ:COST) hotdog and drink combos (enough for the global population seven times over)
- One year’s worth of Luxembourg’s gross domestic product
- All outstanding shares in the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) (well, you’d come four billion short, so wait for a dip in the market)
- All outstanding shares in Citigroup Inc (NYSE:NYSE:C)
- Microsoft’s failed acquisition of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) with US$21bn in change
- 750,000 Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Model X Plaids
- 112,000 Buckingham Palaces when taking into account King George III’s initial purchase price of £21,000 in 1761 and inflation over the past 262 years, or
- A measly 40 Buckingham Palaces on Foxtons’ estimated valuation
- The Crown Estate twice over
- Donald Trump’s failed acquisition of Denmark (probably; a price was never put forward, nor was a logistical roadmap to buying a semi-autonomous territory)
- Denmark 50 times over when taking into account US president Harry Truman’s US$100mln bid to buy Denmark in 1946
- West Germany’s reparations to Israel for confiscated Jewish property, forced labour and persecution following the Nuremberg trials, 2.5 times over
- The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:NYSE:DIS)’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox (NASDAQ:FOXA) in 2018
- 16% of all circulating bitcoins (slippage is likely to be an issue)
What would you buy with 90 billion?