They then spent $17 BILLION on share buybacks in the last quarter.
It's not a tech company anymore it's just a financial engineering scheme for large shareholders. If you're a shareholder, good for you!
Not sure what point you're trying to make with this low-effort falsehood. Buy backs are purchased with operating profits, if most of their profits were derived from their massive cash hoard you could label them as an Investment arm or something, but it's coming from their successful business operations and Apple's goal with its Buy Backs and Dividends is to move to a net zero-cash balance, so they have no interest in transitioning into becoming an Investment company.
Do you think there is any downside to just transferring wealth to the (already rich) shareholders over and over and over again? Seems to be their top priority nowadays.
I can spend a trillion dollars and hire a million engineers but that won’t build me a time machine or a perpetual motion device.
Also who do you think the top shareholders of Apple are? Apple making a profit doesn't necessarily hurt the Vanguard ETFs my government-employeed middle class American family members sock retirement saving into...?
1) increase the share price (as you mentioned) 2) signal to investors that the company is bullish on it's future (they wouldn't buyback shares if they thought the shares would be lower in the future) 3) Give the company the option to sell the shares in the future in case the extra capital can be used for a prudent use.
It's really mystifying why people are so against share buybacks while no one talks about dividends. They share a lot of similarity, but buybacks provide more options and greater tax efficiency so they should be preferred over dividends in most cases.
> Do you think there is any downside to just transferring wealth to the (already rich) shareholders over and over and over again? Seems to be their top priority nowadays.
That's not what's really going on (see above). Also, I would hazard to guess that most people who have exposure to the stock market have direct market exposure to Apple. Moreover, about half of households have direct (non-pension) exposure to the stock market. So I don't think your claim about it only benefiting the "already rich" shareholders hold much water. Hell, I would bet that 90% of HN users have direct exposure to equity markets.
Also, I bet you do as well.
