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Statement by Apple

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91 pointslleims136 comments

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Some things Apple could buy, for cash:

* SpaceX (market cap $10Bn, AIUI)

* Dell (a mere $23Bn!)

* Boeing

* Ford

* The entire global publishing industry (figures for the top 50 publishers' turnover are here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/fi... -- the largest only turns over $8.4Bn)

* A year of Puerto Rico's GDP (roughly $100Bn)

It is really hard to get your head around just how big Apple's cash pile is.

Apple Space is something I'd be entirely behind.

I'm not sure I want to fly on a rocket that isn't user-servicable

Also, if anything goes wrong with it you have to do a full restore on it by connecting it to a computer running iTunes.

Do you still have to use Firewire to do the restore? We might be hosed.

It would be so damn beautiful though.

You can get much faster rocket elsewhere for half the price.

If you could order one... The materials would be crap.... It'd need a ROM from a Russian ICBM to function properly On the flight into space you'd need to reboot it several times..... The manufacturer and the launch pad owners would keep the updates from the pilots.

well...do you want to fly on a plane where any passenger can go fiddle around with the jet engine or avionics?

Planes are user-serviceable. The user is the owner, which would be the airline. In the case of an Apple rocket, presumably the manufacturer would be the only one that could service it. This would be like all of the major airlines needing to send their planes back to Airbus or Boeing whenever service needed to be done.

Just bring it to the genius bar.

You fly all the time on planes that you can't service.

But you're not the owner. Do the airlines send their craft back to Boeing when they break down, or do they have their own mechanics?

You think Boeing lets any schmuck work on their aircraft? The airlines have Boeing certified and trained mechanics that work closely with Boeing to conduct maintenance and repairs. Apple, similarly, allows you to become an authorized maintenance service provider for their products.

In any case, the airlines are often not the owners either. A lot of new aircraft are actually leased from Boeing or Airbus. That's kind of how I view my cell phone really. A leased appliance that I'm happy to let the maintenance of which be someone else's problem.

Sometimes they do (cf Dreamliner battery problems).

Those aren't users. The owner of the plane is the user. They use it to get paying customers. If American Airlines had to ship broken planes back to the Apple factory for service and repairs, that would be a problem.

Yeah, when the crew of Applo 13 are told they can't repair the air scrubbers because they were glued to the frame of the spacecraft, they would collectively gasp.

ispace

I'm not going to be behind anything that's rocket powered (nor really, do I want to be directly in front).

"Genius Bar, we have a problem"

You mean in order to build a death star in a shape of their logo?

Or they could pay their tax bill. On revenues of $6B in Australia, they paid only $40M in tax, claiming only $99M in profit.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/labor-mp-tak...

Are they being prosecuted for tax evasion? If not, sounds like they are paying their bill. Take it up with your politicians.

That's a pretty hyprocritical statement. Big companies know how to legally pay almost no taxes, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

And that's probably not "our" politicians who are to blame.

>legally

So it sounds to me like they are paying their tax bill. The fact that it's not as high as vacri or you may like is not their fault.

Big corporations lobby to have tax laws that result in a low tax liability for themselves.

Tax laws for large multinational corporations are also tend to get into grey areas, where it's hard to tell if something is legal or not (not saying Apple are necessarily in that grey area).

The fact that big multinationals are not paying as much tax as many people think is fair is undeniably the fault of both those companies and politicians.

The corporations are just acting on their incentives. The opportunity exists, therefore they're going to take advantage of it.

Returning maximum value to shareholders is something that most (all?) corporations are trying to do. To not take advantage of government loopholes would be neglecting fiduciary duty.

It's not the corporation's job to police morality. That responsibility theoretically belongs to the state. If they're inept and/or corrupt, so be it.

> To not take advantage of government loopholes would be neglecting fiduciary duty.

Not true. Taking advantage of loopholes is sometimes illegal, and sometimes a grey area.

> If they're inept and/or corrupt, so be it.

So why don't we all just give up then? Companies have a duty to earn as much money as possible regardless of morality, lobbying to get whatever laws changed they feel like in the process, and politicians can do whatever they want once they are elected.

In my view letting corporations determine law, law determine morality, and accepting it without complaining is an exceptionally bad idea.

> In my view letting corporations determine law, law determine morality, and accepting it without complaining is an exceptionally bad idea.

I absolutely agree. But as I said prior in the thread, expecting private corporations to not act in their best interest is like arguing against gravity.

This attitude is annoying. They're forming overseas shell corporations with at most a few employees in those offices who claim an extremely high percentage of all IP-derived income. To claim these companies aren't doing anything illegal, simply because we can't prove that a few people in Ireland aren't responsible for all IP, isn't quite fair. Just because you've arranged fancy license agreements with your Ireland offices doesn't mean those contracts are valid or conscionable.

These companies pay almost no taxes yet feed off our public universities, court systems, patent and trademark offices, copyright offices, public airwaves, highways, federal banking infrastructure, etc. It's sick.

And all of the Apple employees driving on those highways pay income tax.

Those employees would be paying income tax at any job. The benefit is squarely to Apple owners. I really don't get the attitude of people who defend these companies paying almost no taxes. The same people must support billionaires paying 10% tax while the rest of us pay 25%+.

There is a scheme in Australia where you don't have a separate cap gains rate, but you get direct credits for actual tax paid by a corporation.

That could work out wonderfully in the US: The rich would pay taxes, somehow then.

> These companies pay almost no taxes yet feed off our public universities, court systems, patent and trademark offices, copyright offices, public airwaves, highways, federal banking infrastructure, etc. It's sick.

You misunderstand me.

I absolutely agree that it's sick.

But it is 100% legal because the government allows it to occur. If you are expecting private organizations to not act in their own interest, you're basically fighting gravity.

but if you think about how it got to this point, this is almost an inevitability.

Lets suppose that a country wised up, and tried to crack down on this sort of thing. Or better yet, all countries did this at the same time! What would happen?

At first, things would be sweet - the "proper" amount of tax (by proper, i mean similar taxing schemes for corporate entities as well as individuals) means more money to the gov't for social services etc.

However, a country might start thinking that they could attract move investment by making these laws a little more lax - tax incentives? tax breaks, or whatever else you name it. The thing is, companies that operate in a particular country does provide that country with useful output (in terms of jobs etc). It's in a country's best interest to attract as many businesses as possible. This leads to the sort of behaviour we see today - lobby groups have power, because they actually do!

I don't think equality is achievable. Not realistically.

> but if you think about how it got to this point, this is almost an inevitability.

Of course. I also agree here.

Which is why all of this complaining is just barking up a tree.

Once a tax system becomes so complicated that you need entire departments of people to work out what the "correct" amount of tax to pay is, you make tax susceptible to optomisation the same as any other part of a business.

The keyword there is legally. Not morally, ethically, according-to-you-ly, etc. And that's what it comes down to. If you want it another way, well, the laws need to be changed.

Did you even bother reading the article? The very first sentence is about a politician pointing this problem out in Parliament.

Hell, that a politician is involved is even in the HN-visible part of the URL.

Your argument is that they aren't paying their tax bill. That's just factually incorrect. I don't know what to tell you.

You replied with the incredibly intellectually lazy "take it up with your politicians", which is exactly what the article describes is happening, but were too lazy to bother reading even the first sentence of. The politicians are questioning the tax issue, and are implying that there is something fishy in the way Apple does their tax - the MP in question thinks that they are not paying their proper tax bill as a result.

>The fact that it's not as high as vacri or you may like is not their fault.

Lobbying (also lobby) is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government [...] [1]

It works pretty well when you are as big as Apple.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying

What is stopping the government from saying: "No, too bad. Pay X amount of taxes instead of the proposed X-Y taxes."

Because "the government" is composed of the same people being lobbied to by Apple.

Yes. That's the point.

We elect those people. We get what we deserve.

If governments make ex post facto changes to the tax law, you create a volatile business environment that turns off new investments especially from overseas investors. This is why countries that nationalize previously private enterprises without notice end up screwing up foreign investment. Who wants to start a company in X country if at any time they can say "No, too bad. Pay me 90% in taxes now."

I'm pretty sure that generated a ton of sales tax revenue.

...which the consumer pays, not Apple.

If they are only making 100m in profit of that 6b in revenue, then a 40% tax rate sounds about right.

The point is that Apple in Australia is basically just a retail arm. The idea that a retail arm has running costs of 97% is purely ludicrous - particularly the retail arm of the richest company in the world, the one of whom everyone talks about how much money they have and how dominant they are.

How is it Apple's fault that Australia has accounting and tax laws that you consider ludicrous?

Perhaps you should read my comment again and have another go at finding what it was that I thought was ludicrous.

What tax bill? Though you use the term "bill," you seem to be arguing that they should actually donate money to the Australia government. I've haven't seen any news that would indicate Apple isn't paying the legally required taxes in Australia.

If they do choose to donate money, I can think of a few better things for them to focus their philanthropic efforts on than government.

to quote kerry packer:

I am not evading tax in any way, shape or form. Now of course I am minimizing my tax and if anybody in this country doesn't minimize their tax they want their heads read because as a government I can tell you you're not spending it that well that we should be donating extra.

To even remotely consider Kerry Packer as an upstanding and completely above-board member of the community is just laughable from the outset. His persona lived large in the world of shady backroom deals, and he loved it.

Sure, everyone wants to minimise their tax, but what quotes like this do is paper over the loopholes available to the very wealthy, that allow them to pay far less than a fair share of tax.

Besides, using the argument of "but it's legal!" to end the conversation would suggest that no-one should ever make new laws, simply because anything that's currently legal 'must be right because it's legal'. A circular argument. For example: Should we make laws for greater transparency in government? No, because it's currently legal for them to hide their activities, therefore it must be correct!

Well said, mate. The fact that big corporations can get away with this pisses me to no end.

I hope at least the shareholders will be paying some taxes :)

Good-guy Apple: Makes too much money; Gives some of it back.

So you can buy new iphones.

They aren't giving it back to all of the end-users that purchased their products. They are performing huge shareholder payouts to people that already own their stock.

Buying SpaceX to turn it into another evil empire? No thanks - we don't want slavery on Mars.

Some useful things Apple could do with extra cash:

* Completely buy and open up H.264/H.265 video codecs and stop hindering open video adoption on the Web and beyond.

* Push for more open hardware.

And etc.

I doubt they'd do anything useful with that cash though.

Buying out all patents related to something up and coming sounds dangerous, we already dislike submarine patents and this sort of act could make them even more likely.

It's not dangerous if they are all opened up - completely the opposite. That's what Google did with buying On2 and opening up VP8. That is really useful way to spend extra cash - it benefits everyone.

But the side effect of apple giving billions of dollars to these patent holders will just cause a gold rush to create similar patents.

Not really. Since there is no guarantee the same thing will happen with any other given patent. It's not like each patent has a great value. The ones which affect the critical markets are important. But trolls already push for making such patents to extort money so it doesn't really change the incentive for making more of them. Was there any higher patent rush after Google bought On2?

Does it benefit Apple? Is the lifetime cost of H264 patent licensing more than the cost to buy out all the patents?

I think it does - it creates interoperability for video on the Web. It benefits everyone including Apple. But they don't think in such terms or pretend that its not relevant. And anyway - they should profit from creating technology, and not from sitting on the pile of patents. But Apple is Apple.

I'm sure that on balance Apple and their ilk like patents, because they only have to compete and cooperate with their peers. No skin off their back if a little guy gets sued for infringement, that just means one less potential threat sneaking into their realm. Upstarts are dangerously disruptive to incumbents.

I was contrasting what the previous poster wrote to some really useful things. And useful here means benefiting everyone around. Opening up widespread video codecs would be just that. But Apple being known for aiming for exactly the opposite won't spend on that of course :)

> SpaceX (market cap $10Bn, AIUI)

Market cap is not the purchase price of a company.

Yeah, the market cap of SpaceX is undefined.

And since Musk owns 2/3 of the company, and seems to be a man with a mission, it's not at all clear that he'd sell to anyone.

Then again.... SpaceX was apparently built on around one billion dollars. So for $10B (Charlie's suggested figure), you have a fair shot at building a SpaceX from scratch. Start by offering to triple the salary of everyone at SpaceX if they come work for you.

I doubt many folks work at SpaceX for the money, so even if it was 10x I doubt many would leave. You don't build a SpaceX from scratch unless you have someone like Musk driving it.

Or maybe sink a significant portion of that cash into hiring the world's brightest scientists and engineers, and doing some crazy, next-gen R&D at the sort of level only governments are able to fund. Maybe fund some university research and claim first patent rights on the results, too. Hell, might as well buy the future for the next 50-odd years.

To the extent that Apple's success is predicated on staying a couple steps ahead of the market, seems like a decent investment.

Apple has been ramping up their R&D spending.

Here is a chart from last fall: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/31/apples-rd-spending-climbs-1....

Their most recent quarterly filing showed a quarterly expense of $1 billion on R&D, a 33% increase from the same quarter a year ago.

This letter looks like it exposes Apple to an enormous potential tax penalty.

From http://www.irs.gov/publications/p542/ar02.html#en_US_2011_pu...

"A corporation can accumulate its earnings for a possible expansion or other bona fide business reasons. However, if a corporation allows earnings to accumulate beyond the reasonable needs of the business, it may be subject to an accumulated earnings tax of 15%. If the accumulated earnings tax applies, interest applies to the tax from the date the corporate return was originally due, without extensions.

"To determine if the corporation is subject to this tax, first treat an accumulation of $250,000 or less generally as within the reasonable needs of most businesses.....

"In determining if the corporation has accumulated earnings and profits beyond its reasonable needs, value the listed and readily marketable securities owned by the corporation and purchased with its earnings and profits at net liquidation value, not at cost.

"Reasonable needs of the business include the following.

"Specific, definite, and feasible plans for use of the earnings accumulation in the business.....

"The absence of a bona fide business reason for a corporation's accumulated earnings may be indicated by many different circumstances, such as a lack of regular distributions to its shareholders....

Good thing for Apple that the tax laws of the USA don't seem to apply to megacorps.

The last quote there seems to indemnify them...they need cash to pay out "regular distributions to its shareholders" thus any amount of money they have is justified by the need for cash to pay dividends.

Can someone explain what this means and why it's happening?

Some shareholders want to sue Apple to force them to pay out more of Apple's cash to shareholders. This is a fairly legitimate claim, as companies are meant to pay out excess profits back to shareholders in the form of dividends/preference shares, and Apple is earning more money every quarter than they can use or are paying back. They are also sueing over a special term that allows Apple to create preference shares... not a big deal.

This press release states that Apple is making plans to pay out more cash to shareholders, and that the special term does not exclude the board of directors from doing other things with preference shares in addition.

Apple shares are likely to rise on this news in the short term, but may be a signal that Apple has no new healthy investments, and may lower share price in the long term. Nobody knows, share markets are volatile.

"Some shareholders want to sue Apple to force them to pay out more of Apple's cash to shareholders.."

From my reading of the news, I think this is wrong. Einhorn (of Greenlight) is not suing to force them to pay out. He's pressuring via normal shareholder activism.

"They are also sueing over a special term that allows Apple to create preference shares.."

Well, this is closer, but still not quite right.

Apple has a proposal forward for shareholder vote. Einhorn/Greenlight claim that this proposal is really three proposals in one, and that SEC rules require these three proposals to be unbundled, and voted on seperately. They're therefore suing to force this unbundling.

Even if his suit is 100% successful, Apple shareholders will still be able to vote in favour of the modification, which would, according to the summary by Apple and that by CalPERS, 'Eliminate “blank check” preferred stock'.

Einhorn's choice of language implies that he is in favour of at least one of the other aspects of Proposal 2, which is part of why he's suing to unbundle.

Here are some things I read to help me understand this:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/00011715201300...

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2013/02/07/aapl-is-...

and then after that, re-read TFA (the apple.com statement)

If a public company does not pay dividends, what is the motivation for an investor to buy their stock? As far as I can see, an investor can only make money by selling to a "greater fool" or waiting in anticipation that the company will pay a dividend.

The motivation is the expectation that it will increase in value relative to other investment options (e.g., the company increases in market share, etc.). This doesn't mean a later buyer is a "greater fool", but rather that the fraction of the company is now worth more.

"Buy low, sell high".

the company can also buy back shares. the point is that essentially that as long as the company is profitable and continuing to generate cash flow, some shareholder down the road will get his or her due, so the stock is worth some value of these projected cash flows.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1713703...

Apple is sitting on somewhere close to $200,000,000,000 in _cash_ (or whatever equivalent billions of dollars are stored in). Seems Apple is getting sued by [a] stockholder(s) for hoarding cash to the tune of >$140/stock.

Can anyone here comment on what qualifies as cash?

Definitions vary (depending on context), but generally it refers to short term (usually 90 day or less), highly liquid investments such as Treasury bills, money market holdings and commercial paper.

Short term investments that can be liquidated quickly. Most of it is not in the US.

I believe it's just about anything they own that's actually cash or that they could turn into cash on short notice. Cash, T-Bills, marketable securities.

Highly-liquid short term instruments with very high credit rating, such as actively traded stocks, US Treasury bills, banker acceptances, commercial paper.

It's more on the order of 120-140 billion, not 200.

According to their 10k (which I received in paper yesterday):

As of 9/29/2012, they had 121.3B in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. Of that, 10.7B in cash, 18.3B in short term marketable securities, and and 92B in Long term marketable securities.

Cash + equivalents are highly liquid investments with maturities of 3 months or less at the date of purchase. Short term securities have a maturity of < 12 months, and long term are > 12 months.

It's also broken down by holding (in $B):

  Money Market    : 1.4 (cash)
  Mutual Funds    : 2.4 (st)
  US Treasury     : 20.1 (mixed, mostly lt)
  US Agency       : 19.5 (mostly lt)
  Non US Gov      : 5.6  (mostly lt)
  CDs             : 2.2  (cash + lt)
  Commercial Paper: 2.1 (cash + st)
  Corporate       : 46.8  (st + mostly lt)
  Munis           : 5.6   (mostly lt)
  MortgageBacked  : 12   (lt)

(edit for formatting)

Nope, most of it is outside USA, so Apple would have to stop by Uncle Sam's house and drop quite a few pennies first http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/microsoft-taxes-pro... . Maybe 30% or so

Greenlight (an investment fund) wants to push Apple to issue preferred stock. Why? Because, among other things, preferred stock, compared to ordinary issued shares, will receive a perpetual dividend (very much like a bond), but with no maturity.

Pros for the investor: if you are corporation/qualified investor, rather than paying 35% capital gains tax in the U.S. they will pay 15%. Preferred also tends to be senior to ordinary equity.

Cons for the investor: they will probably have little or no voting rights as preferred equity holders. Little decision making at the shareholders' meeting. Additionally, given that preferred equity does not participate in the growth of the company, the preferred shares and dividends will most certainly remain/trade like a bond, with little volatility compared to traditional equities (if Apple's revenues/cash continue to grow like crazy, preferred equity investor will not have that much an upside).

Cons for Apple: preferred dividends are not tax-deductible (unlike debt). In theory, Apple's cost of capital will increase. They will also issue an instrument with no redemption date.

Pros for Apple: they might be able to avoid paying any repatriation on cash held internationally. Preferred equity is great for defending a company from hostile takeovers (but this is rare in Apple's case given its size).

> if you are corporation/qualified investor, rather than paying 35% capital gains tax in the U.S. they will pay 15%.

Serious question: all else being equal, if you had to pay less taxes on gains from preferred stock, then wouldn't the market be expected to price it higher, since people are presumably investing, buying/selling based on their expected return post-taxes? Thus, in the end, making it a wash?

Or are there other factors, like international investors etc., that prevent this?

In some ways this is a negative. Issuing dividends means a company thinks that an investor can get a higher return on the cash elsewhere. I.e. there is a lack of profitable opportunities for the company to invest their cash pile.

True, but with such a giant pile, it is only saying that they can't invest the part they return (which is a small percentage of their total).

It also indicate fiscal conservatism in a not-yet-recovered economy, which can be a solid positive.

If I was a start-up, and you gave me $10M seed money, and I gave it back to you a year later saying I don't have any ideas, would you call me fiscally conservative, or a waste of time?

Economies of scale make that analogy not relevant.

In a volatile industry like technology, where a competitors industry changing technology can destroy your profitability in a very short time (eg. Nokia, RIM, Yahoo!, etc) does it make sense for Apple to double down on research with this 'excess cash'?

It seems Apple spends considerably less effort on the long-term research like Google and Microsoft. In Microsoft's case, it may be some of these longer range technologies which will keep it relevant, for Google, it seems their research may keep them growing.

Apple is far more efficient than companies like Google or Microsoft when it comes to reasearch. In the last 15 years, they have produced the iPod, iPhone, iPad, radically different computer designs, OS X, Final Cut, and quite a few other products.

Over the same period, google has produced PageRank. Microsoft has produced nothing innovative.

Apple pays less of its revenue in R&D, but that's because its revenue is so big.

Microsoft has produced nothing innovative.

The Kinect was pretty cool.

> Over the same period, google has produced PageRank. Microsoft has produced nothing innovative.

What are you, an idiot? Seriously.

EDIT: Downvote away, I stand by my comment - parent has got to be the dumbest thing I've read on HN for a while and deserves to be called out on it.

It's a very fanboyish argument, I agree. Self driving cars don't fund themselves.

Where's Apple's equivalent to MSR[1]? I found ATG[2], but closed by Jobs in 97. Microsoft does a huge amount of research, and publishes tons of papers. Google publishes papers, too. Does Apple do that kind of stuff at all? Perhaps work on LLVM and stuff.

Maybe you mean Apple's done a better job of bringing products to market, which is probably arguably true.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Technology_Group

What has MSR done for me (or hell, even Microsoft) lately? Has any of their research been applied into usable value or changed the scope of human knowledge for the rest of us?

I seriously want to know.

I think you might be slightly underestimating what Google has produced[1] in its 15 year lifetime.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products

This looks like a very tax-efficient way to repatriate cash.

They actually don't touch the cash in this scheme.

Agreed, and they don't want to... Apple's cash is much more useful to Apple wherever it happens to be. It's the shareholders who want the cash, which in a lot of cases means repatriation.

I think you misunderstand me. The existing cash pile would remain untouched and therefore would not be subject to any taxes. The preferred shares would earn dividends from Apple which would be paid out from free cash flow. It's a tax efficient way to deliver shareholder value without taking the tax hit like they would if done in the traditional way of a regular dividend or buybacks.

This is just one method of course, another way is to issue debt in the US and use that to repurchase shares/pay dividends. The board will determine what the best way to go about it is, as there are pros and cons to both.

I take this as good news, i found in the most unfortunate way how deceptively diversified I actually was compared to how much I thought I was. For the most part I was invested in an array of mutual funds, which I really haven't been watching closely for a while as I have been seeing fairly good return. However when Apple started dipping, I saw myself dipping too. Upon further investigation I found my exposure to Apple was quite significant :\

Apple is learning that a record sales and established leadership in your market can still cause your stock to drop 40% over a quarter...So now they are working with hedge fund managers and wall street analysts to offer some complicated trading package. Now Wall street can take credit for AAPL's revival in the markets.

Why is Apple not just buying back it's shares? Would that not be the most tax efficient way of increasing shareholder value?

That would transfer value only to those shareholders who sold shares. A special dividend benefits all shareholders. Both effectively accomplish the same thing (less money in the company, more among the shareholders), though a buyback would also inflate share price (fewer shares outstanding).

Preferred Shares are more like bonds (in that they generally pay a higher dividend rate and are more immune to market swings). In the event of bankruptcy, preferred shares have more priority over common shares but less than bonds.

Apple doesn't need the money so I'm not sure why they would want to issue them.

The preferred shares would be issued to everyone that holds the common equity. They wouldn't be raising money if they followed Einhorn's plan.

Is that corporate-speak for "We don't have any new mind blowing products that will benefit from extra capital"?

$120B (and growing) probably goes a bit above and beyond "extra capital".

So does this mean that it is likely to be profitable to buy Apple stock now?

No, it means it WAS likely to be profitable to buy Apple stock.

Now is too late.

Their P/E is still ridiculously low, of course.

Why would it be? It's no secret how much cash is represented by each share of stock.

Too late.

In a 100% rational market, all this excessive cash is accounted for in current stock price, and price of stock will drop as dividend is issued -- they most definitely will.

No. The dividends are less than 1% of the share price. For it to be considered to be profitable on dividends alone I think it would need to pay 10% or more. I don't expect it to increase by 1000%. http://investor.apple.com/faq.cfm

Edit: looks like I was wrong about the price. That seems to be the quarterly dividend. So it's 2% and it could go up. http://www.thestreet.com/dividends/leaders/index.html

Edit 2: Here's a graph of Apple's dividend yield: http://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/dividend_yield

Close... it means it's time to sell their stock now.

This, along with the parent comment, is why the stock market is irrational.

How so?

Apple's stock is already priced to account for their war chest. If the war chest is drawn down, the stock would (presumably) reflect this and drop in proportion to the amount of cash that's released.

I'm saying that on the same news, one person interpreted it as a buy signal and one person interpreted it as a sell signal.

That is true, however it is not why the/a stock market is irrational.

Well, first off, one person asked, the other told, but in your sentiment:

What you refer to is more likely a skew of information, a mix of information traders and (e.g.) value traders, or (generalizing term) noise traders.

There may not be a facit as to "Is this good or bad for the value of AAPL to have dividends paid out in this amount?". There may be different interpretations. Some might feel it's a sign of a new path in dividends payout from Apple even in the future. Some might think it's a short term "stunt" to keep the investors happy. Some might think it makes them less valuable as they have less money, some might think a strategy of catering to profit and investors will outweigh the "loss" in dividend payout.

Just looking at this thread of comments shows there are many interpretations.

If you think this is remotely interesting, I'd suggest reading up on reactions to news, e.g.: http://web.usm.my/journal/aamjaf/vol%207-2-2011/7-2-4.pdf (we overstimate the effects of bad news, and underestimate good news) or an easy-to-read intro to financial markets: http://www.amazon.com/Trading-Exchanges-Market-Microstructur... (it's a big book, but easy to read selectively, and has a few good chapters on market participants that might help explain how the market works).

In classical stock markets, if Apple is worth $450 a share and they issue a $10 dividend after trading closes, the next morning the stock will trade at $440. If you grew up reading the stock listings in things called "newspapers" sometimes you would see a letter (I think "x" for "ex-dividend" but it's literally been decades) in the listings next to stocks that were doing this, so you knew that a price drop was about to/had just happened.

So even if no one were engaging in arbitrage opportunities, it would make no difference when you purchase the stock.

Alternately, we have this market. Apple went ex-dividend today, which would (ordinarily) result in their opening price being adjusted to 2.65 below yesterday's closing (457.26). In this (real) market, it opened up somewhere between $2 and $5 (459-463). (google's data isn't very fine grained here).

This bodes well for shareholders. I imagine any additional return will be announced in March (when dividends/buybacks were announced last year).

Now that Steve is gone they no longer know what to do with their money. The current management rather then reinvesting the money in the company will simply squander it away by giving it back to stock holders. I'm sure that in a couple of years, when Apple actually starts needing this money, everybody will realize how stupid it was to give away their war chest.

Really, that the current CEO could not think of anything better than to give money back to the stock holders tells me that Apple is now doomed. The guy has no imagination. This move is so typical for a numbers guy. Steve would never have done that. At least not to this extent.

Right now Apple is simply running on inertia but once the momentum is over I expect the entire company will collapse.

You made about twenty leaps of logic there. And you're also ridiculously wrong. Even if Tim Cook is an awful CEO (which, come on, at least give him a chance to prove it)... well, Ballmer has had 12 years to run Microsoft into the ground and they're still ticking.

"Really, that the current CEO could not think of anything better than to give money back to the stock holders tells me that Apple is now doomed."

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why the stock market is a zero-sum game.

If management did not came with this the investors could "force" Apple to do as they please in an assembly as is their right, they can also vote to oust the CEO, Steve Jobs or any John Doe, if they wish, they are owners of the company after all and they're there for the money not generally for any love for the company.

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