Apple More than Doubles Capital Return Program

Nothing says "We are out of ideas" quite as powerfully as a company that announces a big share repurchase program.<p>Do you believe there are untold, unimagined technologies waiting to be invented? Do you believe that the future will be radically different than the present? Then you should be investing, heavily, in the future.<p>Do you want to be ambushed by the new kid on the block? Do you want to be the overly-confident behemoth who is cut down by the upstart, just as IBM was cut down by Microsoft? Well, then don't invest in the future, just buy lots of your own shares.

I am way happier with stock buyback vs. dividend right now, since the stock is so undervalued. There are also tax benefits to buyback.<p>I would love to see Apple spend billions each (not tens of billions) on:<p>1) turning iCloud into something <i>amazing</i> -- an individual, small business, or enterprise framework to do device management, sync, etc. Everything Steve Jobs would have wanted as a consumer service, but also available as SAAS or on-premises, like BES, to manage the phones for a company.<p>2) Don't go into the enterprise software market, but buy a decent enterprise software company or talent just for talent, and get those guys to make Apple <i>the</i> way to develop enterprise software. Basically everything Microsoft does with MSDN, easy hooks to build for the enterprise, etc.<p>3) Invest in GitHub, either in equity, or just in first-class support. Integrate GitHub and Apple software development and ideally some app development tool like Parse, so it's easy for power users, enterprise IT, and third party developers to build apps for the ecosystem.<p>4) Use security as a competitive advantage; build platform security like on iOS for OSX, but even <i>better</i> than the best option out there today (ChromeOS). Great management tools for individuals, companies, developers to do MDM, ERM, etc. Make using Apple devices with Apple-blessed apps and Apple-blessed services actually safe.<p>5) Make i18n/l10n for the Apple ecosystem better and easier than for anything else.<p>(disclaimer: I have what for me is a fairly huge open call position in apple options over the next 2 years, so I'm pretty "invested" in Apple's success)

I confess that I understand very little of this. Can someone explain what does this mean in layman terms?<p>I did understand that Apple is going to invest more money in its own shares, as a result of which, the portion of Apple, Inc. owned by other investors will be reduced. However -- what does this imply? Is this a general pattern that companies follow at some point in their lifetime?<p>Again, I apologize for my lack of knowledge in this domain.

Hacker News readers who are interested in how share buybacks work and how they can be a very <i>good</i> idea (even in the tech industry) should read up on Henry Singleton &#38; Teledyne:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Earl_Singleton" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Earl_Singleton</a> <a href="http://observer.com/2003/04/the-brain-behind-teledyne-a-great-american-capitalist/" rel="nofollow">http://observer.com/2003/04/the-brain-behind-teledyne-a-grea...</a><p>Think of it as a way to reinvest in the future of your current business without having to actually expand it (which, in the case of a company at Apple's size/stage, would likely be wasted on low-returning incremental investments). Apple returning capital is a good thing -- it's how businesses should work.

I'm so torn about this.<p>As a shareholder, it's great news for me. But as a member of the tech industry and generally idealistic guy, it hurts to see them bending to the calls of the finance industry.

I think this is a reaction to textbook Wall Street game-playing. A nice network of hedge managers went 5-6x on aapl, they sell it and bring the price down while "analysts" come up with all this bs about how Apple's record setting quarter doesn't meet their "expectations".<p>At the same time, I think Tim Cook has to be a little more vocal. It may not be the Steve Jobs way, but I think its ok talk to the press solely for the purpose of inspiring confidence in your company as opposed to waiting for product releases .