Slashdot Mirror
Apple, Microsoft and Google Hold 23% Of All US Corporate Cash Outside the Finance Sector (geekwire.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Apple, Microsoft, and Google are the top three cash-rich U.S. companies across all sectors of business, not including banks and other financial institutions -- holding a combined $391 billion in cash as of the end of 2015, or more than 23 percent of the entire $1.68 trillion held by the nation's non-financial corporations. Apple leads the pack with $215.7 billion in cash, followed by Microsoft at $102.6 billion, and Google at $73.1 billion. The numbers are documented in a new report from Moody's Investors Service that shows an unprecedented concentration of cash in the tech sector. For the first time, the top five companies on the Moody's cash ranking are tech companies, with Cisco and Oracle following Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Technology companies overall held $777 billion in cash, or 46 percent of the total cash across all non-financial industries.
Why not include the financial sector in this analysis? I'm sure it holds enough corporate cash to make the tech sector seem insignificant.
I could do without seeing Google on that list, though.
Meet the new Slashdot, same as the old Slashdot.
Gee, Apple could almost pay the annual interest on the US national debt. For a whole year!!!
-Bob-
They should buy a country and funnel all profits to that. All these pesky tax havens being made illegal.
Dear /.,
DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICE
You have linked to a story including the "777" device, which is a registered trademark of The Boeing Company. Since this article will attract negative comment from Slashdotters regarding tax, H1B etc etc please take down your link to this article so that Boeing is not caught up in the shitstorm.
Faceless Lawyer.
I knew I needed to stop reading Slashdot and finish my PhD when I started to miss articles by Bennett Haselton.
This is a dupe. Then there was the broken link and the incorrect claim that Google invested $168 in a solar plant that caught fire. That one never got fixed. Bring back Timothy, Soulskill, and sampenzus!
Why is this so interesting to the slashdot editors? A similar story ran the other day about this. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are currently the 3 largest US corporations by market cap. If I had to guess the top 3 US corporations ordered by cash reserves, then by default I'd probably pick... drum roll please... the 3 largest US corporations by market cap (assuming I didn't have any other information to use).
There is a difference between cash and a number on a banks statement.
Passionately Indifferent
It kept companies from grinding the economy to a halt by hoarding all the cash. If you don't wanna invest it we'd give it to somebody who did. Use it or lose it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
US Corporate Cash
Outside the Financial Sector
Nice qualification on the claims. Throw in the financial sector, small businesses, foreign holdings, and companies that have changed their citizenship and recalculate.
Hold on. This is the tech sector. Perhaps they ment "cache". The tech sector is holding a lot of cache.
Proverbs 21:19
Are there any longer term data on the nature of their cash holdings -- ie, has this amount increased over time or is it fairly static?
I'm also curious about the economic impact of cash hoarding like this. Presumably having this much capital tied up in short-term non-working assets is suboptimal in a macroeconomic sense.
My understanding is that it mostly gets parked in high liquidity accounts and instruments, and that even banks have begun charging negative interest rates on large deposits because the short term nature and liquidity demands prevent them from being able to use it as capital.
I'm also curious how shareholders feel about this. It would seem kind of obnoxious for a corporation to hoard cash that could be paid out as dividends. Obviously some amount of cash (even relatively large) is a good idea for future investments and acquisitions, but maybe not at the levels shown here.
Earnings on their stocks should be taxed at the highest rate possible.
- no wait, even higher.
Don't tax the companies
Tax those kind and gentle folk that invest in them.
Slashdot holds 100% of the dupes on this site. Good job!
What does that mean? What is your intent here?
Based on my accounting background, I would say this is bad. But probably not for the same reasons as others. This means that Apple, Google, and Microsoft are not doing a great job running their business. Its not a "bad job", just not a great job. It could just mean that most of the other companies are reinvesting their cash (and equivalents) in expansions, buildings, upgrades, or giving it out as dividends & salaries (think Walmart, Publix, ConocoPhillips, Boeing, Samsung, Tesla, etc).
Too much cash normally means the owners are playing it too safe and not investing enough or could invest in higher risk & more profitable ventures. I doubt these guys are hording cash to buy each other.
...is that 87% of that cash is stashed overseas, with no taxes being paid to the U.S. government on that portion :(
I am not a number - I am a free man!
Eliminate the business tax on repatriating funds if the business distributes 10% of the repatriated funds as a one time dividend to shareholders. The stockholders won't be able to use as many loopholes to avoid federal taxes as individuals, it'll redistribute a lot of the repatriated wealth very quickly and for institutional shareholders like pension funds it'll be a shot in the arm for their balance sheets.
"...holding a combined $391 billion in cash as of the end of 2015"
And still millions of people - including children - are homeless and hungry.
Presumably having this much capital tied up in short-term non-working assets is suboptimal in a macroeconomic sense.
No need to qualify that statement. It definitely is sub-optimal in a macro and micro economic sense. Basically it means those companies have no idea how to make productive use of that capital.
I'm also curious how shareholders feel about this.
I'm not a shareholder in these companies but I would have mixed feelings about it. On one hand having a fortress of a balance sheet makes investing in the company extremely safe. Even if Apple were to stop selling iPhones tomorrow, they literally could buy another Fortune 100 company in cash if they needed to. With as much cash as these companies have it would take an act of malfeasance on the scale of Enron for them to go out of business. On the other hand if they have that much cash stored away it clearly indicates that they don't have any ideas about how to put it to productive use. That being the case it would make sense to either substantially increase the dividend or buy back lots more shares.
Honestly I suspect that sooner or later you're going to get activist investors who will look at those piles of cash and see them as the idle assets they are. I think all three of them are going to have to do some rather substantial acquisitions or they will be forced to distribute a large portion of their cash hoards.
Well, it seems to be down by about 10% from 4 days ago!
We just had this story, more-or-less:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
The headline's an improvement on last time, though.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Eliminate the business tax on repatriating funds if the business distributes 10% of the repatriated funds as a one time dividend to shareholders.
One time distributions won't solve the problem. It just creates an incentive to wait for the tax amnesty the next time. They've actually done a one time tax amnesty before with predictable results. No, you need to actually change the laws so that it is economically attractive to repatriate the funds. Could be done by eliminating corporate taxes and taxing all income (corporate or personal) at the personal level like they do for S-Corps. (I'm overly simplifying here but you get the idea) That way the corporation has no reason to not repatriate the funds since the shareholders are going to pay taxes on it whether or not it is repatriated.
The problem isn't hard to solve but it would require the US to elect a Congress that doesn't break out in hives every time the word tax is spoken.
I am no fan of reagan, but have to give the man credit; he DID re-do the taxes in which he got rid of so many tax breaks. We need to do the same here and solve this issue with these companies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The "cash" they hold isn't held as actual cash, it's just very liquid investments.
A distinction without a real difference. You'll see it on the balance sheet as "Cash and Cash Equivalents". For all practical purposes it is cash and it's well understood that they don't actually have a pile of bills sitting in a vault somewhere. (or at least we should hope they don't)
Even if they did hold it in "cash" it wouldn't be cash, it would be a current account balance with a bank.
Again, largely correct but also an unimportant distinction. The cash is theirs to withdraw whenever they want it. The fact that it is held in a bank or held in coffee can in the back yard is something of an academic distinction except in very rare circumstances.
That bank is VERY busy investing that money elsewhere
Just because the bank is (in theory) lending that money out doesn't mean that is an optimal use of that capital. And in practice, the banks have tightened lending standards over the past few years so they aren't putting as much capital to work as they could. You are quite correct that the bank is putting substantial amounts of that money to work but a lot of it is tied up in things like Treasury Bills which are of rather modest value towards economic growth.
I think the articles I've read tried to chalk this up to the slow growth of the economy generally. There just aren't enough productive investments to put the money into.
I don't personally subscribe to that theory. I think there are plenty of productive investments available today. Arguments about the economy being slow are fig leaf excuses. Frankly what better time to buy at a good price than when prices are depressed by economic conditions? No, the problem is something else.
The problem is that there are not a lot of huge investments available that will return 25% net margins like Apple, Google and Microsoft are accustomed to. Any of them could buy any but a handful of companies on the planet in cash. Many of these firms are very profitable. Just not 25% net margins profitable. For a company the size of Apple to move the needle on their net income, they need to generate businesses worth tens of billions of dollars. But they also know that if they were to do something like buying Ford, they would piss off shareholders who are very pleased with 25% net margins and now have to deal with 5% net margins on the business acquired.
You earn $100. You pay $30 tax. You pay plumber $70. He pays $21 tax, so YOU get $49 worth of plumbing. The work value of your money at a 30% tax rate is less than 50%.
But wait, there's more!
Plumber pays $49 to electrician. Electrician pays $15 in tax. Plumber gets $35 worth of electrician's service.
So far (and this keeps going) $66 of your $100 has gone for taxes.
Income tax isn't so much "regressive" as it is a near-perfect vacuum.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"How to detect a person full of shit by the spectrum of limited words that retard can use"
> When a Google gets "burned", that means potentially the stockholders end up moving from rich to slightly less rich. For the middle class, "burned" means
Those damn stockholders, rich people saving up tthousands of dollars in their 401k. Fuck them. They don't need to retire, to have hundreds of thousands of dollars when they're 72. Tax the hell out them, they can eat dog food when they're old.
You're attempting to draw a distinction between "stockholders" and "middle class". You're missing the fact that "stockholder" means "everyone over 30 who has half a clue". Stockholders ARE the middle class, all middle-class people who aren't ignorant or irresponsible invest for retirement. One day, not too long from now, you'll be old, 60,70,80 years old. You won't be able to work like you do in your twenties. That means you'll need enough savings to last you for 20 years or so - a million dollars or more. How the hell do you save up a million dollars so you can eat and pay bills for 20 years when your retired? You put the first 10%-15% of your income into mutual funds while you're working; you become a stockholder.
The companies don't have a big room with stacks of $20 bills. "Cash" in this sense means investments they can sell quickly.
If Musk OWNS battery research lab and factory, selling that portion of the business might take a year or two. That's considered a long-term, illiquid investment. On the other hand, if Google finances the same type of battery R&D by buying 10% of the stock in a separate battery technology company, they can easily sell that stock within a day or two. That's called a liquid investment, or cash-equalivent.
Either way the money is invested in the same type of R&D and builds the same type of factory. It's accounted as cash when it's arranged so that the company can get out quickly, converting their investment into actual cash.
The most "cash like" is when Google hands the money to a bank, and then the bank loans the money to someone starting a new business or buying a house or whatever. All money ends up being invested. Again the distinction is whether it's a pure financial investment only, so the company can get out of that investment quickly , or if the investment is directly into the operations of the business, such as Cox investing in building a fiber-optic network. Cox can't quickly sell their fiber network, so that's a non-cash investment. It's all investment.
Cram it, corporate supplicant. It never ceases to amaze me how many millions of fools clamor to stick up for the poor, put upon 'job creator' billionaires. No doubt as they have the same craven greedy desires in their tiny cold hearts.
Unfortunately, they are all waiting for the innagauration, after which they will get their coveted tax-free repatriation of their filthy lucre, benefitting no one in the US economy save no-neck security guards, butlers, and of course, the highest level prostitutes.
Does Apple pay enough dividend to make the difference between 5% and 25% meaningful to shareholders, or are we just playing the stock price appreciation game where shareholders don't give a shit about fundamentals as long as the stock price increases?
Apple currently has annual earnings per share of $9.22 and pays $1.98 in dividends per share. That is roughly 20% of their earnings going to dividends. Plus they are doing some stock buyback as well. So if margins were to drop by to 5% and all else held stable, they would basically be paying out all of their earnings in dividends. So yes, the margins matter. A lot. But that's a bit over simplistic. More realistically they could find some businesses with 10-15% net margins and buy those. Then their margins would fall some but still be plenty high. Apple simply has the law of big numbers working against them so if investors are realistic they'll understand that it is unlikely the company can substantially grow AND maintain their margins where they are. I won't say it's impossible but it will be difficult.
If Apple does introduce a car, I guarantee you they are NOT going to make 25% net margins. The most profitable car companies in the world manage to get around 10% net margins and most are somewhere around 5% or lower.
Pardon my cynicism, but I think corporations should have to provide compelling reasons to hoard cash on this scale or pay dividends.
That's not cynicism. That's a very reasonable stance. If the company does not have investment opportunities with an expected return superior to the market as a whole they should return any excess cash to the shareholders. Any shareholder can put the money in an index fund and get a decent return. But if the company just sits on a pile of cash that does nothing to benefit the shareholders. Having a big war chest isn't bad in and of itself what with economic cycles and market risk. But beyond a certain point they are no longer protecting the company from risk and instead are creating an opportunity cost for the shareholders.
And shame on investors for just surfing stock price increases and not giving a shit about how these companies are managed.
I couldn't agree more. It's one of the reasons I don't typically invest in stocks of companies whose price has no relation to economic fundamentals. For example Tesla. I like Tesla and I think it is a well managed company. But it's market cap is insane compared to the actual economic prospects of the company right now. Explain to me any reasonable way a company which sold around 50,000 cars and that hasn't made a dime of profit last year justifies a valuation of $30 billion. For comparison Ford's market cap is $50 billion and they sell a hell of a lot more cars than Tesla AND are profitable.
"A large portion of tech company cash is held overseas, highlighting ongoing roadblocks corporate tax reform that would help companies repatriate those funds. Moodyâ(TM)s estimates that Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Oracle have $441 billion overseas, representing 87 percent of their cash."
Because the US is one of the few countries in the world that taxes income of corporations earned outside the US. Change the rules to what almost every other country uses (income is taxed in the country where it is generated on sales), and that cash will come back to the US in terms of investment in the US and dividends.
hail eris
I approve.
> A Bill Gates or Eric Schmidt in no case are "burned" in the same sense
You're confusing high-level employees vs stockholders (retirement / home-purchase savings). 2% of Google is owned by Eric Schmidt. 4% of Microsoft is owned by Bill Gates. The vast majority of stock is owned by middle-class people saving up to buy a home, send a kid to college, or retire.
You actually have a very, very important choice to make. You can do what is easy for now and very painful later, or you can do what takes a bit of effort now and will pay off greatly in not-too-distant future. You can whine about rich people, which will have no practical effect other than wasting your time, or you can go spend a few minutes learning about index mutual funds, then about your company's 401k. If you take the second option, you'll likely learn that the company you work for is willing to give you free money. You save the first ten percent of your pay check and they'll throw in an additional 5%, free money for you. Then in just a few years you can own a house instead of throwing money away on rent every damn month. Do a bit of that and you end up financially comfortable.
1/25 of the National Debt.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
> Every single person I know that owned stocks were all bought back up by the company, and this is happening much more rapidly than one would think.
Do you work front-line support at Dell, and mostly only know other Dell employees? Taking a company private is relatively rare, though it is happening more often since Sarbanes-Oxley increased the cost of being public.
Anyway, when a company goes private, stockholders are generally paid about 30% more than the market value of their shares (they wouldn't vote to approve the deal otherwise). So congratulations, you just made easy money. Next I'd suggest re-investing that money in an index mutual fund. The risk is far lower than a single stock and index funds have very low expenses. I look for expense ratios of 0.10% or better. One example is IVE, another is UMBIX.
> more than 23 percent of the entire $1.68 trillion held by the nation's non-financial corporations.
Anyone have any idea how much cash the *financial corporations* hold?
(I wonder whether that number is a little more scandalous...)
What if they have a long term outlook and preparing themselves for the next 25% margin industry?
Do you have any idea how rare large businesses with that kind of profit margin are? Google, Apple and Microsoft are all basically software companies (yes Apple is a software company) and it's unlikely they will find huge businesses with that kind of margin outside of software and even within software ideas worth tens of billions of dollars don't come around every day. Microsoft has been milking Windows and Office for decades now. Despite everything Google has thrown money at they still make virtually all their money from advertising. Furthermore they don't have a lot of institutional expertise outside of software so if they want to get out of their lane it's going to be a incredibly hard adjustment culturally more than anything else. Worse, they are fighting the law of big numbers. It's far easier to grow a million dollar company by 25% than to grow a billion dollar company by 5%.
I'm not saying it's impossible but businesses like the iPhone don't come around every 5 years. Realistically Apple has had 4 revolutionary products in 40 years (Apple ][, Macintosh, iPod/iTunes, and the iPhone/iPad) that have been major commercial successes for them and they still almost went bankrupt at one point 20 years ago. What's next? No idea. But they are going to have a VERY hard time matching the success of the iPhone/iPad platform. Odds are we will see a regression to the mean. It's possible they will buck the trend but it's hard to have any objective confidence.
I am surprised that ebay is not on this list. Or is Ebay a "financial" company because of its ownership of Paypal? I gave more money to Ebay and Paypal then any other company over the last few years.