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From the cash flow statement for the last 9 months: 10.8B spent on dividends 66.2B spent on repurchase of shares For context, Apple spent 16.1B on R&D. It’s

From the cash flow statement for the last 9 months: 10.8B spent on dividends 66.2B spent on repurchase of shares For context, Apple spent 16.1B on R&D. It’s amazing they can self-fund this kind of growth while still returning so much capital to shareholders.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Apple's biggest asset is their branding. They make great products, but that's not what fuels their enormous margins.
- WisNorCan 5y ago
  You may have reversed the causality. Apple's brand comes from delivering great products. iPhone, Mac, Watch, AirPods, etc. all have incredible customer satisfaction metrics.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    All luxury brands make products that have incredible satisfaction metrics. That's not what makes them luxury brands. The meticulous brand image crafting is.
    - exclusiv 5y ago
      If you look at Apple as if you were to acquire them (in some alternate universe where you had that financial capability), then yes I'd agree with you that their brand is their single biggest asset. However, I agree with the parent - you actually have to have great products and services that delight to become big and relevant... and stay big and relevant. This enables your sexy branding to be effective. Your sexy branding doesn't make your products and services better. It just lures consumers in, but that only works for so long unless you deliver on your promise. A brand is a promise kept as the old saying goes. This is from 7 years ago but a pretty good: The Twilight of Brands - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/twilight-brands https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/twilight-brand... "the rise of brands was a response to an information-poor environment. When consumers had to rely on advertisements and their past experience with a company, brands served as proxies for quality; if a car was made by G.M., or a ketchup by Heinz, you assumed that it was pretty good. It was hard to figure out if a new product from an unfamiliar company was reliable or not, so brand loyalty was a way of reducing risk. As recently as the nineteen-eighties, nearly four-fifths of American car buyers stayed loyal to a brand." "Roku, a maker of streaming entertainment devices, has thrived even though its products have to compete with similar ones made by Apple (which is usually cited as the world’s most valuable brand)." So let's say you buy Apple (just the name and branding and nothing else) - you still aren't going to be shit without everything else. We aren't in an information poor environment. Consumers would know the brand was sold and that the quality could not be trusted.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        In this universe about 25 years ago, being able to acquire Apple wasn't a "what if" possibility. Bad management decisions, or CEO replacements, can turn really bad, regardless of the current situation.
    - SilverRed 5y ago
      Is Apple a luxury brand? Their products are priced about the same as their competitors. Just the raw value for money is often better on Apple products than on others. Every other luxury brand I know has very poor value for money.
willis936 5y ago
Now if only they paid more than 10% income tax I could have a road without potholes.
- city41 5y ago
  Potholes in Cupertino? Cupertino has the most pristine asphalt I think I've ever seen.
  - justicezyx 5y ago
    I thought People buy Apple products all over the world? Not just at Cpuertino? Jokes aside, I want to point out that the money is made from selling to people. The profit does not come from air. They were from people. You can argue how justified that the profit belongs to the company. But it ultimately comes from people, and should be used on them as well.
    - SllX 5y ago
      The obligations of the seller are over after the point of sale barring warranty and after-sale support. The tax bill is due at the point that the State requests payment. If the State receives the money and opts not to pursue more money before the statute of the limitations expires, the obligations to the State are satisfied. So why is the seller then obligated beyond prior agreements to expend the profits of the sale on the buyer? Where is your logic?
      - justicezyx 5y ago
        This is a great observation. Simply put, point of sell is a micro transaction. But profit coming from people ought to be used on people, that's a macro concept. Just like you won't service intelligence by focusing on individual neurons activity, you won't buy the idea that collective the profit should be used on the people as a whole. So, why apple profit should be used on people? Because apple depends on the whole society providing the materials talents social constructs for its profit making. For example, without us military, you can ganrantee that apple will need to pay a lot more in tax to other countries (not saying that's wrong). And without the education system, there won't be enough highly skilled engineer. And you might ask, the exiting system already extracted tax from Apple business. That's right. But the investors of us military and education are not organized as stock based ownership, so that part of value creation was never reflected in Apple' ownership at all. I mean, why someone invest in actual captital be able to grab certain percentage of companies, far larger than the employee of the firm? Wasn't employee do 99.99% of the work instead of shareholders? Let's say us military and education system decide, collectively, Apple should grant certain amount of share from the company, do you think it will work? No, that's because the system cannot support such mechanism. Back to the original argument. If the system could not correctly assess the actor's contribution to the profit, then it has to be that the profit needs to be pulled together for the people. And I am sure that Apple took more than their fair shares of economy profit for a smaller group of share holders. Therefore my statement.

colinmhayes 5y ago

Apple's biggest asset is their branding. They make great products, but that's not what fuels their enormous margins.

WisNorCan 5y ago
You may have reversed the causality. Apple's brand comes from delivering great products. iPhone, Mac, Watch, AirPods, etc. all have incredible customer satisfaction metrics.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  All luxury brands make products that have incredible satisfaction metrics. That's not what makes them luxury brands. The meticulous brand image crafting is.
  - exclusiv 5y ago
    If you look at Apple as if you were to acquire them (in some alternate universe where you had that financial capability), then yes I'd agree with you that their brand is their single biggest asset. However, I agree with the parent - you actually have to have great products and services that delight to become big and relevant... and stay big and relevant. This enables your sexy branding to be effective. Your sexy branding doesn't make your products and services better. It just lures consumers in, but that only works for so long unless you deliver on your promise. A brand is a promise kept as the old saying goes. This is from 7 years ago but a pretty good: The Twilight of Brands - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/twilight-brands https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/twilight-brand... "the rise of brands was a response to an information-poor environment. When consumers had to rely on advertisements and their past experience with a company, brands served as proxies for quality; if a car was made by G.M., or a ketchup by Heinz, you assumed that it was pretty good. It was hard to figure out if a new product from an unfamiliar company was reliable or not, so brand loyalty was a way of reducing risk. As recently as the nineteen-eighties, nearly four-fifths of American car buyers stayed loyal to a brand." "Roku, a maker of streaming entertainment devices, has thrived even though its products have to compete with similar ones made by Apple (which is usually cited as the world’s most valuable brand)." So let's say you buy Apple (just the name and branding and nothing else) - you still aren't going to be shit without everything else. We aren't in an information poor environment. Consumers would know the brand was sold and that the quality could not be trusted.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      In this universe about 25 years ago, being able to acquire Apple wasn't a "what if" possibility. Bad management decisions, or CEO replacements, can turn really bad, regardless of the current situation.
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    Is Apple a luxury brand? Their products are priced about the same as their competitors. Just the raw value for money is often better on Apple products than on others. Every other luxury brand I know has very poor value for money.

willis936 5y ago

Now if only they paid more than 10% income tax I could have a road without potholes.

city41 5y ago
Potholes in Cupertino? Cupertino has the most pristine asphalt I think I've ever seen.
- justicezyx 5y ago
  I thought People buy Apple products all over the world? Not just at Cpuertino? Jokes aside, I want to point out that the money is made from selling to people. The profit does not come from air. They were from people. You can argue how justified that the profit belongs to the company. But it ultimately comes from people, and should be used on them as well.
  - SllX 5y ago
    The obligations of the seller are over after the point of sale barring warranty and after-sale support. The tax bill is due at the point that the State requests payment. If the State receives the money and opts not to pursue more money before the statute of the limitations expires, the obligations to the State are satisfied. So why is the seller then obligated beyond prior agreements to expend the profits of the sale on the buyer? Where is your logic?
    - justicezyx 5y ago
      This is a great observation. Simply put, point of sell is a micro transaction. But profit coming from people ought to be used on people, that's a macro concept. Just like you won't service intelligence by focusing on individual neurons activity, you won't buy the idea that collective the profit should be used on the people as a whole. So, why apple profit should be used on people? Because apple depends on the whole society providing the materials talents social constructs for its profit making. For example, without us military, you can ganrantee that apple will need to pay a lot more in tax to other countries (not saying that's wrong). And without the education system, there won't be enough highly skilled engineer. And you might ask, the exiting system already extracted tax from Apple business. That's right. But the investors of us military and education are not organized as stock based ownership, so that part of value creation was never reflected in Apple' ownership at all. I mean, why someone invest in actual captital be able to grab certain percentage of companies, far larger than the employee of the firm? Wasn't employee do 99.99% of the work instead of shareholders? Let's say us military and education system decide, collectively, Apple should grant certain amount of share from the company, do you think it will work? No, that's because the system cannot support such mechanism. Back to the original argument. If the system could not correctly assess the actor's contribution to the profit, then it has to be that the profit needs to be pulled together for the people. And I am sure that Apple took more than their fair shares of economy profit for a smaller group of share holders. Therefore my statement.