7 fun facts about Apple's cash

The company finished fiscal Q2 with $65.8 billion in cash and marketable securities

Click to enlarge. Source: Asymco

Asymco's Horace Dediu, who is a master at these things, has charted Apple's (AAPL) growing cash hoard and offered some comparisons to put it in perspective. I quote:

• The funds are big enough to place Apple's CFO office in the top 100 largest fund managers in the world and larger than any hedge fund manager.
• Cash growth in one quarter was higher than the market cap of many companies. For example, if pre-payments were added back, the cash increased by about the market cap of Motorola Mobility.
• Current cash is worth more than Nokia, RIM and Motorola Mobility's market caps, put together.
• Apple's cash is worth half of Google's enterprise value.
• About two years ago, in January 2009 the stock traded at a price of $78 with at least one analyst placing a target of $70 on the stock. Today Apple's cash is worth $70/share.
• If you owned $100,000 of Apple stock, $19,000 of that would be cash and only about $80,000 would be "at risk" capital.
• If Apple had no revenues, the current cash would sustain operations (SG&A and R&D) for over 7 years or until the middle of 2018.

Any day now I expect to see calls from the institutions that hold 70.8% of Apple's outstanding shares urging the company to return some of that cash to its shareholders. I fully expect Apple to ignore them, as it always does.

For more on where Apple parks its cash and cash equivalents, see Dediu's If Cash is King, Apple is an Emperor.

Also on Fortune.com:

• Apple clobbers estimates, iPad sales fall short
• A fantastic use for Apple's cash
• Why Steve Jobs doesn't pay dividends

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]