Apple’s cash for short-term and long-term marketable securities totaled $65.8 billion at the end of the March quarter. Cash increased by $6.1 billion.
The increase in cash is net of approximately $900 million for prepayments and capital expenditures related to the strategic supply agreements that Apple announced last quarter.
The following chart shows the historic cash, short-term and long-term liquid assets Apple holds.
The enormity of the overall size of this cash can be put into several perspectives:
- The funds are big enough to place Apple’s CFO office in the top 100 largest fund managers in the world and larger than any hedge fund manager.
- Cash growth in one quarter was higher than the market cap of many companies. For example, if pre-payments were added back, the cash increased by about the market cap of Motorola Mobility.
- Current cash is worth more than Nokia, RIM and Motorola Mobility’s market caps, put together.
- Apple’s cash is worth half of Google’s enterprise value.
- About two years ago, in January 2009 the stock traded at a price of $78 with at least one analyst placing a target of $70 on the stock. Today Apple’s cash is worth $
6770/share. - If you owned $100,000 of Apple stock, $19,000 of that would be cash and only about $80,000 would be “at risk” capital.
- If Apple had no revenues, the current cash would sustain operations (SG&A and R&D) for over 7 years or until the middle of 2018.
