What's in Apple's Wallet? Cash 11 comments

2. What has Apple been doing with its colossal cash position? Buying other companies at exorbitant prices? Playing a high rolling investor and buying stock back when it traded at $190? Making risky investment bets? Nope. Investing in Treasuries, commercial paper, government securities. What's impressive in this 50% down market is that the company's securities and commercial paper only had a $122 million unrealized loss. That's a miniscule 0.4% unrealized loss, an amount that may never actually occur. According to investor relations at Apple, the portfolio currently yields approximately 2.4%, or over $675 million a year. Wouldn't you like the guy who runs Apple's money to manage your portfolio?

3. At a time when everyone's cash is disappearing, Apple's cash growth is accelerating.

4. To put Apple's cash position in perspective, it's bigger than the market caps of 9 Dow Industrial Stocks. Next quarter its cash position likely will be larger than Disney's (DIS) market cap. Excluding GE and the financials, the average Dow stock has $8.5 billion in cash.

The three stories the market continues to ignore about Apple:

1. Its real earnings are given by its non-GAAP figures, not GAAP. It's the only way to follow the iPhone story.

2. The capturing of market share of its products throughout the world.

3. The piling up of cash.