Apple working on first Taiwanese bond sale, new Australian bond offering

Apple is exploring a new bond sale in Australia in light of a successful offering last year, and is also looking at launching its first-ever Taiwanese bonds, a report said on Wednesday.

For Australia, the company has hired the Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs, two sources informed Bloomberg. The sale is expected to take place in the near future, but the exact timing will naturally be subject to market conditions.

The Taiwanese venture will involve 30-year bonds in U.S. currency, separate sources said. Although they didn't mention a timeframe, Apple is reportedly aiming at a volume of $800 million to $1.2 billion, and a yield of approximately 4.2 percent.

The company has launched a number of bond offerings around the world in recent years, which have helped to finance share buybacks and dividends without taking a deep bite into the company's cash reserves, now up to $233 billion. Most of that — $209 billion — is stashed outside the U.S., since the company has refused to repatriate the money without a lower tax rate.

New bond offerings would presumably continue this trend. In the past year alone Apple has paid out tens of billions to investors, including $2.9 billion in dividends that were due May 12.

7 Comments

crowley 10431 comments · 15 Years

About 8 years ago

Would be interesting to know the total accumulated debt now.

sog35 said:

crowley said:

Would be interesting to know the total accumulated debt now.

About $80 billion as of the end of March

Thanks. That figure should really be in the article. If you're going to make a thing of Apples cash pile as an asset then the liabilities are also an important bit of information.

MacPro 19837 comments · 18 Years

crowley said:

sog35 said:

About $80 billion as of the end of March

Thanks. That figure should really be in the article. If you're going to make a thing of Apples cash pile as an asset then the liabilities are also an important bit of information.

It was explained a few days ago in here on AI in a way I (just about) understood that this money is so cheap for Apple it enables share buy backs, thus reducing dividends netting actual gains. Not sure if it's that simple that was my take away.

cwingrav 83 comments · 16 Years

digitalclips said:

crowley said:

Thanks. That figure should really be in the article. If you're going to make a thing of Apples cash pile as an asset then the liabilities are also an important bit of information.

It was explained a few days ago in here on AI in a way I (just about) understood that this money is so cheap for Apple it enables share buy backs, thus reducing dividends netting actual gains. Not sure if it's that simple that was my take away.

That's an interesting point. If you forget inflation for a moment, and assume their dividend is about 2% a share with a 4% interest rate on a bond, then you can see buying back their shares (reducing the dividend payed) pays for itself in a few years time. Awesome. Ah, compound interest and big numbers.

cwingrav said:

digitalclips said:

It was explained a few days ago in here on AI in a way I (just about) understood that this money is so cheap for Apple it enables share buy backs, thus reducing dividends netting actual gains. Not sure if it's that simple that was my take away.

That's an interesting point. If you forget inflation for a moment, and assume their dividend is about 2% a share with a 4% interest rate on a bond, then you can see buying back their shares (reducing the dividend payed) pays for itself in a few years time. Awesome. Ah, compound interest and big numbers.

I don't begin to try to understand all this, I have many accountant friends and they don't even seem to be able to. All I know is my mantra is 'Please AAPL stay above 100 until I fully retire". We bought low enough that our dream was always to one day reach $700 (pre split) and that's where we are roughly at now so here's hoping!