Three days after its newest iPad finally made it to the hands of eager customers, another group of Apple affiliates is also getting what they’ve wanted. Apple (AAPL) shareholders will start receiving a regular quarterly dividend of $2.65/share during Apple’s fourth quarter, which starts the first day of July. Three months later, the company will initiate a $10 billion share buyback program aimed at keeping the number of outstanding shares fairly constant despite significant equity grants and stock options for employees. Altogether, Apple expects to use $45 billion of domestic cash over the next 3 years, according to CFO Peter Oppenheimer.
That still leaves about $53 billion of Apple cash in the company’s “war chest” and speculating about possible uses for this cash is sure to remain one of Wall Street’s favorite activities. Acquisition targets from Nintendo to Hulu to T-Mobile have been rumored or proposed, but Apple would surely face significant antitrust scrutiny with any acquisition. Still, the company says strategic purchases will be part of its future. “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,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement announcing the
dividend and share buyback program.
Cook also mentioned that Apple had a “record weekend” when asked about sales of the new iPad. He did not say whether he was talking about a record for all products or for the iPad specifically. The iPhone 4S sold 4 million units during its first weekend on sale, and analysts were predicting that more than 2 million iPads would be sold this weekend. Apple sold 4.69 iPads during the second quarter of 2011, when the iPad 2 went on sale, and it sold 9.25 million during the following quarter.
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