FORTUNE -- By the time it decided in April to increase its stock buyback program five fold -- from $10 billion to $60 billion -- Apple (AAPL) already spent $1.95 billion of the original $10 billion fund and had bought and retired nearly 4.1 million shares of Apple common stock. Average share price, according to the company's latest Form 10-Q: $478.20.
That leaves, by Robert Paul Leitao's calculations, $58 billion to be spent over the next 11 quarters.
Leitao, who writes the Posts at Eventide blog and oversees the Braeburn Group of independent analysts, used two assumptions to create the charts above: That the $58 billion would be spent in equal parts of approximately $5.272 billion each, and that Apple's share price would rise $25 each quarter from $475 per share this quarter to $725 per share in fiscal Q1 2016 (the last calendar quarter of 2015).
As a result of the exercise, Leitao made several interesting discoveries:
"The dividends saved each year will go a long way to covering the interest costs on the funds borrowed to facilitate the share repurchases," Leitao nots, "while Apple continues to earn interest on the off-shore funds not repatriated and used for the share repurchases."
NOTE: Included in the numbers is the expectation the 1,494,992 shares received on April 1, 2013 will be included in the June quarter reduction in the share count. Not included are any new shares used for stock-based compensation during the 11-quarter period.
It ends this week. Investors might as well get ready for the negative headlines.
FORTUNE -- The bad news is that every analyst we've surveyed -- even the most bullish -- believes that for the first time in a decade Apple (AAPL) will report that its income this quarter was lower than the same quarter the year before.
According to Thomson Financial, the consensus EPS for fiscal Q2 2013 on Friday was MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 24, 2013 9:43 AM ET
The law of large numbers says it must. Not anytime soon, says Robert Paul Leitao.
The law of large numbers as applied to finance (as opposed to flipping a coin) says that as a company grows, its chances of sustaining large percentage revenue gains diminish. That's because an expanding enterprise must grow faster and faster just to maintain a constant percentage growth rate. Indeed, a company growing 30% to 50% a MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 5, 2010 8:49 AM ET