Investors floored as Apple’s cash pile reaches astonishing $194 billion

Investors floored as Apple’s cash pile reaches astonishing $194 billion

Think Microsoft and Google are big? Well, Apple has more cash and investments on hand that both of those companies -- combined.

Tech giant Apple now has $33 billion in cash and short-term investments as well as $160.4 billion in long-term investments, meaning it has a whopping $194 billion in cash and investments that dwarfs any other non-finanical company out there.

No other company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 that isn’t a financial firm has even close to the cash and investments of Apple, which jumped 8.6 percent at the end of 2015, according to a USA Today report.

Apple even has Google and Microsoft beat in that area — combined. Much of its cash is tied up in Treasury securities and other long-term investments, which is why these investments are lumped into its cash reserves in order to truly gauge just how much liquidity it has on hand.

By comparison, Microsoft has $107.4 billion in cash and investments, placing it in second place, while Google has $67 billion. Drug-maker Pfizer has $54.4 billion, and Cisco Systems has $54.2 billion.

This huge cash pile is of huge importance to investors, who like to have big dividends and stock buybacks, and Apple has announced that it will increase its capital return program, according to the report.

Apple will buy back stock from $90 billion up to $140 billion, and will increase its dividend to 11 percent, increasing the total dividend to $1.16 billion, which would be the 20th biggest increase in the history of the S&P 500, according to the report.

Apple pays out dividends of $12.1 billion per year, which beats out oil giant Exxon Mobil at $11.6 billion.

Apple announced yesterday that its board of directors had authorized an increase of more than 50 percent to the return capital to shareholders, which it would utilize its massive cash reserves to handle the expande dprogram by the end of March 2017.

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