How Apple Continues to Increase Shareholder Value

Apple (AAPL) stated that it has completed $201.0 billion of its $250.0 billion ongoing capital return program. Taking past returns into consideration, Apple plans to pay shareholders $250.0 billion by the end of March 2018. In fiscal 1Q17, Apple returned $6.0 billion in share repurchases and $3.1 billion through dividends to shareholders.

Apple CFO (chief financial officer) Luca Maestri said, “We returned almost $15 billion to investors during a very busy December quarter for our capital return activities. We paid $3.1 billion in dividends and equivalents. We spent $5 billion on repurchases of 44.3 million Apple shares through open market transactions.”

While Apple didn’t announce any increase in its quarterly payout, it did declare a dividend of $0.57 per share, payable on February 9, 2017. The company said its capital return program has returned more than $201.0 billion to its shareholders since August 2012. Apple has a dividend yield of 1.8%, compared to 2.1% in fiscal 4Q16 and 2.2% in fiscal 1Q16.

Dividend yields for peer technology (QQQ) companies Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Western Digital (WDC), and IBM (IBM) were 3.5%, 2.9%, and 3.2%, respectively, as of their last reported quarters.

In the last four years, Apple has acquired more than 15 companies and is looking to add strategic value through those acquisitions.