Apple Repurchases $14 Billion in Shares in 2 Weeks, Company Open to Large Acquisitions

[Naaaaak]

It's not a waste of money. They just bought out 28 million shareholders. It's only a waste of money if you consider for example paying back your mortgage or your credit card debt a waste of money.

Look at it at a smaller scale: Say four guys own a company worth a million dollar. Then some analyst says the company is only worth $900,000, and three of the guys pay $225,000 to the fourth to buy him out, because he thinks the analyst is right and they think the analyst is wrong. So now three guys own a company worth $775,000. They are each richer than before.

In terms of actual productive effort, $14 billion was spent shifting papers. That's it. It's paper profit, assuming their stock goes up and stays up. Apple of old didn't care about their stock. The market will do whatever the hell it pleases and Apple can't stop it. Placating a few stockholders and a lifetime douchebag pump-and-dumper is not a good use of money.

Apple is in a unique position where they don't have to buy their stock to make it go up. They can invent and sell the future and make it go up. They have the engineering effort and production capacity to make anything. Apple spent a small fraction of $14 billion to develop the first Mac, the first iPod, the first iPhone. All of these things provided infinitely more long-term value to the company and by extension, shareholders, than buying back some stock.

 

[giantfan1224]

And they do make money based on standard stock transactions.... why do you think they should get a bonus? What have they done besides be greedy and self-serving? Look at the movie Wall Street if you want to see what kind of people investors and speculators are.

Who are "they"? You might as well include me in your "they" since I'm a stockholder too. And I absolutely believe Apple should be buying back their stock. That's the smart thing to do when your stock is undervalued and you have a pile of cash that keeps growing.

Your comments sure make you seem envious of those of us that have the means to invest.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Who are "they"? You might as well include me in your "they" since I'm a stockholder too. And I absolutely believe Apple should be buying back their stock. That's the smart thing to do when your stock is undervalued and you have a pile of cash that keeps growing.

Your comments sure make you seem envious of those of us that have the means to invest.

Or maybe has simply confused movies with the real world. The number of people who do this so willingly never ceases to amaze me.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Gobble up BB and be done with it. They have a vast patent portfolio and their email expertise could do no harm to Apple; moreover, their current infrastructure in terms of messaging services can vastly help Apple's iMessage service.

Email? really??

Dude you gotta think of the BIG picture:

NOC
QNX especially in Audi's A7 Autonomous Self-Drive system publicly driven in Las Vegas HWY's and showcased with applomb at CES 2014!

QNX Cloud EMM/M2M management solution (think BES10 on roids)

And QNX Neutrino itself this could help their iCloud servers power management systems.

But to be honest Apple has grown without this need and iMessage now pushes more daily messages and iCloud pushes more than BBM globally on a daily basis and is more robust if you look at the past 2yrs. And I'm a BB10 fan!

I think the share purchases are basically Apple saying "Take THAT Mr Ichan" suck it!

 

[Rogifan]

I assume they do, too. So what else could have been accomplished with $14 billion? What kind operations could they have gotten a head start on, knowing where they are going?

Why can't they do both? What evidence is there that Apple isn't investing in things they should be because of this share repurchase? Cook knows better than anyone (certainly anyone here) what Apple's future plans are. Obviously Apple is able to invest in its future (like the sapphire plant and the 21 acquisitions it's made over the past year) and do share repurchases at the same time.

 

[LizKat]

$14 billion to buy-back stock because it dipped 8%.

What an incredible waste of money.

What else could be accomplished for $14 billion?

No a waste of money is spending $3B on a thermostat.

Actually, $79 on (yet another) MagSafe power adapter comes to my mind.

 

[Naaaaak]

Why can't they do both? What evidence is there that Apple isn't investing in things they should be because of this share repurchase? Cook knows better than anyone (certainly anyone here) what Apple's future plans are. Obviously Apple is able to invest in its future (like the sapphire plant and the 21 acquisitions it's made over the past year) and do share repurchases at the same time.

Why can't they also just give their money away? Or throw in the towel and become and Android handset maker? Apple listening to I-douchebag is like Apple listening to CNET commentators ("Apple should get into netbooks - they will miss out if they don't!", etc.)

If AAPL is a growth stock like Apple keeps saying, then the stock should be able to support itself. Apple's actions alone would dictate more of a gain than a buyback would. If it's a value stock, they could have increased the dividend, instead.

The side effect of what they is a smaller domestic cash pile. What a waste.