During their Q2 2013 quarterly earnings conference call yesterday, Apple revealed that their massive cash reserve is continuing to grow, despite Tim Cook’s efforts to return more of Apple’s money back to the shareholders. According to the latest numbers, Apple’s cash reserve is now up to a whopping $145B – up 5.8% from three months ago at $137.1B. That’s enough cash to buy all of Amazon.com (with a market cap of just over $120B), with enough left over to buy a good chunk of Facebook, which is valued at $61.89 billion.
Despite the company dispensing more cash back to investors than ever before, their cash horde continues to grow (as illustrated in the above chart from TechCrunch). With that amount of cash, Apple is in a prime position to make some serious acquisitions. Should they buy Twitter, or Facebook? Or perhaps Valve, or Netflix? Or maybe they should use it to develop some amazing new consumer technologies…
Maybe Apple’s cash is better placed as a safety net for the company in case something happens – they could likely continue to run Apple for several years with that much money, even if they never sold another product ever after today. At any rate, Apple doesn’t seem to be ready to decrease their gigantic cash mountain in a significant way – at least not yet.
It’s unclear what will become of Apple’s cash horde – but if it keeps growing the way it is, don’t be surprised if they purchase a large country in the next couple of decades (not really, of course). The United States of Apple, anyone?
