Shareholders of record in AAPL as of November 6 will receive a dividend of 47 cents per share once again in the second dispersal of revenue since the stock was split 7-to-1 last June. The company will pay out some $2.75 billion in dividends on 5.866 billion outstanding shares — about 800 million fewer shares than seen before the aggressive share buyback program started last year. The stock closed the week at an all-time record high of $108 per share for the second week running.
Apple has been unusually proactive in buying back its own shares, spending $17 billion on the project in the September quarter alone. The reduction in outstanding shares is likely to be helping to drive the stock price higher, along with the outstanding performance of the company and its management. AAPL is up 34.75 percent for the year, 45.38 percent from this date last year, and up 65.49 percent from its 52-week low of $71.
The company has spent about $68 billion of a planned $100 billion for share buybacks, and has also spent another $11 billion in dividends, with an average of about $2.8 billion distributed per quarter. Despite this divestiture of monies, the company continues to keep its cash stockpile healthy: it reported that it had $155 billion in cash on hand at the end of its fiscal Q4, but an increasing portion of that is stored overseas, as it comes from foreign sales. Apple spends its US cash revenue to handle things like dividend payments, and occasionally borrows to finance the stock buybacks and other investments.
