Moody Investor Services, as reported by Marketwatch, predicts that Apple would touch around $170 billion of cash reserve by end of this year 2013 but with considerations that Apple would not make any huge unplanned investments. With the ongoing crash of Apple’s stock lately many investors are predicting that Apple would increase its stock buyback program amount and also consider paying a higher dividend per share to attract more buyers towards its stock and thus push its stock price. Last year Apple announced that it would invest around $45 billion over a period of 3 years to buyback stock worth $10 billion and subsequently hand out $2.5 billion per quarter as dividend.
Current cash reserves of Apple account to approximately $137 billion which would grow to almost $170 billion or more by adding around $35 billion in cash this year as predicted by Moody investors. The top 5 companies in US alone account to almost $347 billion which is almost 25% of all the amount held by all the non-finance corporations in the US.
Apple has plans chalked out to invest around $9 billion in improving current facilities and around $1 billion to expand its retail footprint across the globe. Even after all the ruckus over falling stock price and an investment of around $55 billion analysts are still predicting strong quarters for Apple’s cash reserves at least.