| I mean, the biggest indicator of the shift in their priorities is that they took 100 billion dollars in cash and used it for stock buybacks and dividends. Can you imagine Google doing such a thing? They would never dream of this, because they are too busy re-investing their profits with their big-picture potentially world changing research projects. Apple's executing a $45B buyback and dividend program that's expected to run over three years. They made $6B in profit last quarter. Thus, while they're losing $45B over three years, if they keep on track, they'll make far more than $72B during that same period of time. (That's assuming they never make more or less than $6B a quarter over the next three years... in Q1, they made $13B in profit.) The buyback and dividends make investors happy and keep Apple's stock from being diluted by employee grants and options, and those programs can be done with the company still making solid profits. Seems like a win-win. And don't think Apple's not reinvesting profits for future products and innovations. If anything, Apple's track record over the past 14 years should be a clear sign that they're always aggressively reinvesting profit in improving every part of their business, and are always quietly working on something new. Finally, the person quoted was one point of view, and we have no perspective on how he left Apple. Your inner geek doesn't need to be that worried. |
They're not really "losing" $45 billion with the buyback. They're spending $45 billion in cash(which they have) to get $45 billion in stock. The end result, since they don't need to get a loan to execute the buyback would be basically nothing on their books(unrealistically assuming the stock doesn't move at all).