Apple has just announced that they will be holding an early morning conference call tomorrow, Monday March 19, at 6am PDT, 9am EDT to discuss Apple's cash balance. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has said he's "not religious" about holding onto to money, and Apple has repeatedly said they're patient and aren't letting their enormous cash hoard burn a hold in their collective pockets.
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, and Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, will host a conference call to announce the outcome of the Company’s discussions concerning its cash balance. Apple will not be providing an update on the current quarter nor will any topics be discussed other than cash.
Apple's been racing towards $100 billion in cash recently, with no slowdown in sight. Some have called for a dividend for shareholders or a stock buy back, while others have hoped for larger scale purchases.
iMore's own Chris Umiastowski has been hoping for a cash return for a while::
I, for one, would love to see Apple return some of the cash to shareholders. When one quarter of your valuation is tied up in cash it doesn’t maximize value. Apple earns some interest income on the cash, but interest rates are excessively low these days and if they paid out the cash it wouldn’t put much of a dent in their earnings. So paying out the cash unlocks value, which is why shareholders are so interested in seeing something materialize. 2012 looks like the year when something will finally happen.
That was following last quarter, where Apple hit $97.6 billion in cash reserves, $46.33 billion in revenue, 37 million iPhones sold, and 15.4 million in iPads sold. Recently, Apple's even hit $600 a share. Indeed, Chris is in the camp that believes Apple could become the world's first trillion dollar company.
If anyone wants to get their best guesses in, do it now before the bell rings on the call tomorrow.
Con call link: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/call31912
