Some people can always find something to complain about. Ever know someone like that? Like, they win the lottery, and all they can think about is the taxes they’ll have to pay? Or they get a promotion, and all they can do is complain about how they’ll have to report to Steve, and Steve is always yelling at them and degrading them in front of their peers? Katie just sent me a link to some dipshit investard who found a way to piss on the shoes of our blowout quarter. I didn’t think it was possible to find a dark lining to our silver cloud. But check it out.
Gist is, we’re making shitloads of money, and we’re just putting it in the bank when instead we should be paying it out as a dividend. Ergo, we’re cheating investors. Our friggin stock broke through $200 today. We’re booming during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. We’re growing even while everyone else in the PC industry is mired in shit. And this guy wants to bitch about the fact that we have $34 billion in the bank, and he thinks we should be paying it out to investors, as if it’s their money or something:
Say you were to pay out $4 billion. That’s a 2% one-time yield at current prices, and it would leave Apple with $30 billion in the bank. And you’d be under no obligation to pay dividends on an ongoing basis, as IBM and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) are. Investors are right to bid up shares of Apple this morning. There’s so much this business is doing right, and doing better than competitors. A long-overdue dividend payment would add a fairy-tale ending to this almost-perfect stock story.
This is exactly the kind of greedy, short-term mindset that led to all the problems on Wall Street and the whole financial collapse that we’re still trying to dig ourselves out of. It makes me sick to see these guys talking like this again. Just sick. Anyway, Mr. Grumpy Pants, instead of pissing on my blowout quarter, why don’t you go piss up a rope? Or go fuck a tree. Because you can’t have any of my money. Sorry. I made it, I keep it. Maybe you should go start a company and put $34 billion in the bank, and then you can pay that money out to complete strangers just because they happen to buy a few shares of your company. Good grief.
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