Apple announces dividends & share repurchase program

Apple held a conference call Monday morning to talk about their plans for the ridiculous amount of cash they have on hand. Those plans include dividends for shareholders as well as a share repurchasing program.

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On the call, which is archived on Apple's site if you want to listen for yourself, it was announced that the company would pay dividends of $2.65 per share. This dividend will be quarterly and should happen during quarter four of fiscal year 2012, which begins on July 1.

In addition to the dividends, the company's Board of Directors authorized a $10 billion share repurchasing program. That program will kick off in fiscal 2013, which beings September 30, 2012. That program is set to span over three years.

In a press release that was snuck out Sunday night before the conference call, Company CEO Tim Cook said,

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“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. You’ll see more of all of these in the future. Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business. So we are going to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program.”

In that same release Apple's CFO Peter Oppenheimer added,

“Combining dividends, share repurchases, and cash used to net-share-settle vesting RSUs, we anticipate utilizing approximately $45 billion of domestic cash in the first three years of our programs. We are extremely confident in our future and see tremendous opportunities ahead.”

With the ridiculous success of all of Apple's products including the newest iteration of the iPad, which sold record breaking amounts, Apple seems very comfortable with their financial outlook. This new dividends program actually makes Apple one of the largest dividend payers across all companies.

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