Apple to announce plan for $98B cash balance Monday morning

Apple is holding a conference call bright and early Monday morning to announce plans for its large cash balance. The company is sitting on around $98 billion in cash, and investors are getting increasingly antsy and clamoring for a dividend or share buyout.

Tim Cook and Apple’s chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer will be hosting the call, which will take place at 9am Eastern time. They will discuss the cash balance only, nothing else. In addition to the call-in number, a live audio stream of the call will be available on all computers or mobile devices running QuickTime 6 or later.

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At the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in February, Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the very expensive elephant in the room, saying “I only ask for a bit of patience so we can do this in a deliberate way and do it in a way that’s best for shareholders.”

“We’re judicious, we’re deliberate, we spend our money like it’s our last penny … We’re not going to go have a toga party or do something outlandish,” he said at the time.

When a company is sitting on a huge pile of cash, as Apple is, it is expected to shell out a dividend to investors, issue a stock buyback, or spend the money on things that will make it even more money. Cook said that, so far, the company has spent billions of dollars on its supply chain, intellectual property, acquisitions, retail, and the Apple infrastructure.

Apple’s share price hit $600 for the first time on March 15 and has since fallen back a bit to $585 a share.

What do you think Apple will do with the cash? What do you think Apple should do with it?