Last chance to buy Apple before it goes ex-dividend

• Sacconaghi: Apple won't boost its dividend until after April 23

  Bernstein's Apple analyst says investors are expecting the equivalent of a 4.5% yield.

  FORTUNE -- According to Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi, Apple's (AAPL) top brass has been holding "widespread discussions" with key investors to get input on its plans to return more of its $137.1 billion cash hoard to shareholders.

  Sacconaghi has been debriefing those investors and now thinks he has a pretty good idea of how Apple's cash management plans have MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 15, 2013 11:20 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Bernstein, Cash, Dividend, Toni Sacconaghi

• Analyst meets with Apple CFO; expects 6% cash return-update

  Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty thinks Apple should borrow to pay its shareholders

  FORTUNE -- While Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn was lobbying shareholders Thursday to support his perpetual preferred stock idea (see Would you buy an iPref from this man?), Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty has been meeting with the Apple (AAPL) executive who rejected Einhorn's proposal last September: Chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer.

  In a note to clients Friday, Huberty reports that she MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 22, 2013 6:47 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, David Einhorn, Dividend, Katy Huberty, Peter Oppenheimer, Toni Sacconaghi

• Here's why Apple doesn't listen to its shareholders

  What do any of their concerns have to do with building great products?

  FORTUNE -- If Tim Cook needed further validation of Steve Jobs' policy of ignoring the needs and entreaties of Apple's (AAPL) shareholders, the results of the survey at right, released Wedenesday, could provide it.

  It comes from a recent luncheon in New York City with several dozen Apple investors that was hosted by Barclays analysts Ben Reitzes and Anthony DiClemente.

  If "the MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 12, 2012 11:45 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Barclays, Dividend, Share repurchase, Shareholders

• Deutsche Bank: Apple special dividend 'welcome but unlikely'

  With Bush tax cuts set to expire, there's a lot of talk about Apple spreading its wealth

  FORTUNE -- If you do a Google search for "Apple special dividend" today you might think Apple (AAPL) shareholders are about to win the lottery. Sample headlines:

  Insider Monkey: Will Apple Inc. pay a special dividend?
  Seeking Alpha: Should Apple issue a special dividend?
  Market Watch: Hedge manager sees Microsoft, Apple special dividends
  Seeking Alpha: The case for Apple's MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 3, 2012 6:48 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Bush tax cuts, Deutsche Bank, Dividend, Special

• Apple to start buying Apple

  The stock repurchase plan announced in March begins this week

  FORTUNE -- Almost lost in the news last March 19 that Apple (AAPL) was initiating a $2.65-per-share dividend was Part 2 of the two-part announcement: A three-year $10 billion stock repurchase plan commencing in fiscal 2013, which began on Sunday.

  The repurchase plan -- designed to offset the shares Apple was giving its employees in lieu of larger salaries -- was neither MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Oct 1, 2012 6:48 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Dividend, Stock repurchase

• Why did Apple drift sideways in 2011 and take off in 2012?

  The dividend is one reason it's up. But what was keeping it down was fear.

  The investors who mull over the mysteries of Apple's (AAPL) valuation at Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board have been trying to come to grips with the shape of the chart at right, which shows the company's stock price drifting sideways for most of 2011 and then taking off like a Scud missile in 2012.

  Although recent gains MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 6, 2012 11:09 AM ET
  Posted in: Anna Murray, Apple, Buffettology, Dividend, Fear, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Warren Buffett

• Apple is up one Amazon since Tim Cook's toga party speech

  Since February 14, the stock has hit 27 new highs in 31 trading days

  "We're not going to go have a toga party or do something outlandish, and so people don't have to worry [the cash] is going to burn a hole in our pocket." -- Tim Cook

  Conventional wisdom had it that Apple's (AAPL) share price would take off  once the company declared a dividend.

  Turns out, all it took was a MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 27, 2012 5:02 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Dividend, Goldman Sachs, Quarterly earnings, Share repurchase, Tim Cook, Toga party

• Apple's dividend and buyback: What the analysts are saying

  Apple (AAPL) gave Wall Street what it had been asking for

  The Street's reaction has been largely positive, and the stock closed Monday at a new all-time high: $601.10, up $15.53 (2.65%) for the day.

  Jefferies' Peter Misek:  Dividend and Buyback Bigger Than Expected. Apple announced a $10.60 annual dividend (1.8%) commencing in CQ3 and $10B buyback over three years (to offset dilution). We had expected a dividend announcement in H2 in the MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 19, 2012 10:19 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Dividend, Piper Jaffray, Repurchase, Stock buyback, Tim Cook

• Why did Apple close Friday at record high $522.41 a share ...

  When Tim Cook's failure to announce a dividend was supposed to send it tumbling?

  If you spent part of Thursday afternoon, as I did, monitoring the $AAPL tweets, you know that Apple's (AAPL) share price was supposed to go into free fall the moment traders found out that the company was not going to announce a dividend, buyback or stock split at its annual stockholders meeting.

  Shares did begin to tumble at MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 24, 2012 6:18 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Dividend, Hedge fund, Jason Schwarz, Seeking Alpha, Stock split, Tim Cook