Apple to Pay Dividend

Breaking with tradition – and changing the definition of a growth company in the process – Apple Monday morning said it would start paying a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share in the September quarter. At $10.60 a year that would currently be about a 1.8% yield, putting it among the highest dividend payers in the US, but disappointing analysts who thought it could easily afford 3% or more. It will also start buying back shares in the December quarter. It means to buy back $10 billion worth of its shares over three years. Many people regard buybacks as a waste of money. Apple’s got more than $100 billion in the bank – twice what Google had at the end of last year – and equal to somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 a share – but two-thirds of it is offshore in the Cayman Islands where it’s paying next to nothing in taxes.

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