Wait, but how does Apple pay off this debt without bringing back the overseas money at some point in time?
Simply, because its Noth American operations generate so much free cashflow before financing activities that with it is expected, factoring a conservative revenue growth rate and significant decline in its gross margin, for the region, that it will be more than able to cover (apply multiplier here) the total service of debt (until maturity) from all the indebtedness it has taken for the dividend payout and stock repurchasing program.
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What a dumb way to spend that money. If Cook is so worried about the share prices, he can hire more people to fix software bugs, put more GBs of storage and ram in all of its hardware, add a couple millimeters to substantially increase battery life of all of its hardware, and I'm sure more people will buy Apple goods and share prices will naturally increase as well. They can buy companies like Adobe and Nintendo for what they spend on buybacks yearly. I buy Apple products, but I know they are far from perfect and Android and Windows just plain suck, so I don't have much of a choice. Watching where the profits go is a bit disturbing to be honest.
It is not an ad-hoc plan to increase the share price, because the market before the repurchases had taken place would have already discounted their effects, they are open and well known, so the actual repurchase doesn't have a direct effect on its stock price. The plan for dividends and stock repurchases and the commitment to execute it was publicly layed out (in quantities and dates) by Apple a few years ago, it was announced by Tim Cook due mainly to the pressure of institutional investors (fund managers);
Steve Jobs would probably have told all of them to go to hell and "****" themselves. But Tim them was a newly appointed CEO.
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Looks like upper mgmt needs to try to boost the stock price to meet their yearly bonus targets....
Their bonuses are not directly tied to the stock performance, but the company fundamentals: delta revenues, delta gross margin absolute and %, delta EBITDA absolute and %, delta net margin absolute %, delta net income before taxes absolute and % by product segment, line, product, market, distribution channel, etc...
The only relationship stock prices has to do with remuneration is by means of its effects in the call options vesting this year but given normally at least three years ago as part of the bonuses of the year given. If the options are out of the money during the period from vesting to expiration (usually not very long) they are simply worth 0 but the person receiving them would in most cases have paid taxes on then because when granted they usually are in the money (taxes have to be pay on the difference between the spot price of the stock and the lower strike price of the option even if the option can not be executed until vested 3 plus years later). If now are worth 0, he put up usually a lot money up front for nothing.