Business investment is the Holy Grail of US economic optimists, but if Apple won't spend, who will?
No one should be telling Apple how to run their business (although Carl Ichan can try). But here is how they are running it.
They aren't investing (relatively) significant sums in research, development or even capex. Bloomberg puts it into perspective.
"Apple currently has $193.5 billion of cash and marketable securities. Wall Street estimates that it will have almost $68.8 billion in free cash flow this year. On the other hand, it has spent $32.8 billion on research and development, total, in its history since 1992. In the same period of 23 years, it's spent $43.6 billion on capital expenditure. Meanwhile, in the last three years, since it started giving money back to shareholders, Apple has spent $112 billion on dividends and share buybacks, and it plans to get that number up to $200 billion over the next two years."
They go on to note that Ichan predicts they will rapidly increase R&D to $13.5 billion but that would still be a small portion of free cash flow.
If a visionary company like Apple can't find ideas to invest in, why would the average company?
