3 ms·
I was with you until you said that amazing profits aren't a good thing, even for Apple. Yes, the amount of money is more than what Apple can realistically spen
by MichaelApproved 14y ago
I was with you until you said that amazing profits aren't a good thing, even for Apple.
Yes, the amount of money is more than what Apple can realistically spend but they can give that money to shareholders who could invest that money in other ventures. That's an amazing result of great profits.
- ajross 14y agoHow is that different from not taking that money from consumers (or investors) in the first place? If a consumer gives Apple $1 to hold for N months before Apple hands it over to a shareholder, that is clearly less effective than the consumer simply giving that dollar to the investor in the first place (e.g. by dropping it in the stock market). I'm not saying that "Apple doesn't deserve its profits". I'm saying that past a certain point, the marginal value to society of huge profits drops to zero, and that Apple is past that point.
- snowwrestler 14y agoI don't see why the marginal value of profits drops to zero. Profits fund bets on the future. The bigger the profits, the bigger the bets that can be made.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago"the marginal value to society of huge profits drops to zero, and that Apple is past that point" It wasn't a discussion about value to society. It was discussion about too much money being a bad thing for Apple, which I disputed.
- twoodfin 14y agoThey're giving that $1 to the investor who was smart enough to invest in AAPL, which produced a product that was sufficiently valuable to consumers that it could demand such margins. The theory is that investor will be more likely to make such smart investments in the future.
- quaunaut 14y agoI thought Apple was well known for not giving dividends?
- anon808 14y agotech companies are generally not well known for giving dividends. But there's also never been a tech company generating the kind of cash apple is.
- MichaelApproved 14y agoI think Steve Jobs was against that kind of thing but he's not there anymore. He seemed to like hording money and I'd guess it was due to the history of Apple having financial trouble years ago.
- mikeryan 14y agoI was with you until you said that amazing profits aren't a good thing, even for Apple. Its terribly difficult to judge Apple or compare them to "normal" companies but there's a prevailing sentiment in some investment quarters that if your profits are too high it means you're not investing enough back into growth. In this case apple gave back 2 billion in profits but gained 4B in revenues. In a lot of cases this is a growth tradeoff many companies would take.