Apple has too much cash admits Tim Cook

If Apple were a cartoon character, it would definitely be Scrooge McDuck. I have a mental image of Apple CEO Tim Cook and other Cupertino bigwigs diving into a company pool filled with cash. Consider that $1 billion in $100 bills would weigh approximately 22,000 pounds assuming each bill weighs 1 g according to Dailykos. If you multiply that by 98 it gets us roughly 2,156,000 pounds for the $98 billion in cash Apple has sitting in the bank. I’d say that’s plenty cash to fill a swimming pool Scrooge style.

It’s literally much more than a ton of money, and Apple CEO Tim Cook says Apple’s now sitting on a cash stockpile that’s too large. In years past the late Steve Jobs held on to all Apple’s cash and socked it away in the bank much the way Apple had done in years past when the company was not in nearly as good a financial situation. Cook noted that he and Apple’s board were considering reinstating the quarterly dividend for shareholders.

There is no guarantee that the dividend will be reinstated at this point. The last payment made to a shareholder by Apple was back in 1995. Apple is certainly in a much, much better financial situation today than it was in 1995. With such a huge amount of money in the bank, I would be surprised if Apple didn’t start paying shareholders something.

“Frankly speaking,” Cook said, “it’s [$98 billion] on more than we need to run the company.”

[via USA Today]