Apple has been pursuing a “cash neutral” policy for a while by selling bonds in order to do what Meta says they are going to do. I’m no corporate financial whiz but I think that using debt to do those things has some sort of tax advantage.
There also seems to be an effort to show a net zero cash holdings position in order to preempt any political attempts to try to take money that corporations are “just sitting on.” I think there was some rumblings of that when Apple had 100+ billion in the bank. When they got wind of various governments’ ideas of extra taxes on excess cash suddenly share buybacks seemed like a better idea than losing that money altogether.
I can't find any solid information, but is it possible it's largely stuck in Ireland? By borrowing money and paying the interest with out-of-country cash, they should be able to avoid US tax, right?
They looked around and thought, we don't have much debt compared to other companies, I bet our company value would go down less than $7B if we offer a $7B bond.
If they can give the $7B to investors today, but the stock value goes down less than $7B by taking it out, they are increasing shareholder profit.
There also seems to be an effort to show a net zero cash holdings position in order to preempt any political attempts to try to take money that corporations are “just sitting on.” I think there was some rumblings of that when Apple had 100+ billion in the bank. When they got wind of various governments’ ideas of extra taxes on excess cash suddenly share buybacks seemed like a better idea than losing that money altogether.