Kyle
Apple has had an unprecedented few years on Wall Street. They’ve doubled their valuation three times in as many years. That’s left them with a serious stock pile of cash to the beat of $100 billion (with a b) dollars. Many people are talking about what they are going to do with that cash. The country’s cash wealthiest company is set to announce their plans for that cash tomorrow morning on a conference call.
Some analysts have predicted that Apple may go into acquisition mode. Twitter seems to be one of the most likely acquisitions. Twitter and Apple have aligned themselves tightly over the last year with deep integration into the latest version of iOS and OSX. Recent estimates have put Twitter at a $7 billion dollar valuation, which at this point would be a drop in the bucket for the Cupertino giant.
While he thinks its a possibility, Thenextweb’s Matthew Panzarino does bring up the fact that Apple has never spent more than $390 million dollars for an acquisition. That was the 2011 acquisition of Israeli flash memory manufacturer Anobit.
More after the break
On the other end of the spectrum of rumors about Apple’s cash flow, MG Siegler, an Apple loyalist and Crunch Fund general partner, has suggested Apple may buy Samsung. Apple doesn’t have enough cash for Samsung but could be a very healthy merger partner. Siegler cites Apple’s new Apple TV product and Apple’s long history as one of Samsung’s biggest customers.
While Apple wouldn’t have enough money to buy the entire company if Samsung were to piece good it out, Samsung’s semiconductor division and flat panel display division would make the most sense so that Apple could guarantee it’s main supply line for displays and silicon. Samsung’s divisions are kept as separate companies. Even Samsung Telecommunications (Samsung Mobile) needs to bid with other manufacturers when looking for chip partners for their phones. That’s why even Samsung’s flagship devices can come with Qualcomm, TI or Samsung chips.
Panzarino also speculates that Apple could possibly build factories and bring manufacturing back to the United States or perhaps build out their own data network. The possibilities are endless when you have more cash then most third world countries.
The most likely scenario is issuing a dividend or some kind of stock buy back program. All of this will be made clear at 9am Eastern/6am Pacific.
source: TNW
