Where is Apple spending its money?
Thanks to its successes in the past decade, Apple has amassed an incredible cash hoard, one so large that it has attracted attention from Wall Street to Washington.
On the political front, Apple has been criticized for paying what some have said is too little taxes for the huge profits it generates. On the business end, Wall Street has constantly been clamoring for the Cupertino, California-based company to do something with its $145 billion-and-growing in cash -- raise its dividend, buy back stock, or acquire a company -- rather than just let it sit idle. Just last month, Minyanville's own Sean Udall opined that Apple would be wise to acquire BlackBerry.
However, what's often left out in this discussion on Apple's supposedly idle cash hoard is the fact that Apple actually has been spending a lot of money -- just not in the areas that people have been paying attention to.
Apple has actually spent some $21.1 billion on capital investment -- or the purchase of manufacturing machinery and equipment -- since the introduction of the iPhone, including some $8 billion in 2012. At a January earnings call, UBS Securities analyst Steven Mulunovich even noted that Apple "spent almost as much as Intel does." Asymco's Horace Dediu quipped that though Apple doesn't do high-profile acquisitions, it in effect "buys the equivalent of one Yahoo every three years."
For the current fiscal year, Apple has even upped its capital expenditure spending to $10 billion. But where exactly is the money going?
Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer had explained at...Read more >>>
