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This Space For Rent. Get in the mailbox of Mac enthusiasts with the Mac News Wire - [EMAIL PROTECTED] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=2391 Should Apple Use its $4.5 Billion Cash for Dividends? By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac July 23rd 2003 By Alex Salkever Time for Apple to Rethink Its Options Jobs & Co. should follow Microsoft's lead and give up its passion for dispensing huge options grants. And how about paying investors a dividend? Investors have long found plenty to like in Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs. From the beginning, Jobs set the course for Apple as an innovator in one of the most rapidly evolving fields of the last 20 years. As a high-tech showman, he has no equal, developing nifty products from the trusty iMac to the iPod, the Walkman of digital music players. And despite the tech bubble popping, Apple (AAPL ) under his guidance remains an efficient and well-managed company. Advertisement Then there's the other Steve Jobs -- the one who has rankled investors. The CEO has largely insulated himself with an insider-friendly board of directors (see BW Online, 3/27/03, "Why Apple Shouldn't Vote for Gore"). He has also chosen to sit for years on a cash pile worth billions, with no clear plans for acquisitions or new products. Some of the more outspoken Apple investors now think Jobs owes them a dividend, considering that the stock has fallen more than 50% since 2000. RAISED STANDARDS.� That's unlikely to happen. But a day of reckoning may be at hand for Jobs on another front: His penchant for rewarding himself and his executive cadres with lavish grants of unexpensed stock options. And the instigator is no less than the anti-Apple, Microsoft. As the most widely held tech stock on the planet, Microsoft sets the standards for compensation policy in the industry. In January, 2003, the Colossus of Redmond announced that it would pay its first dividend. Then, on July 9, CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft would stop issuing stock options and expense outstanding ones, starting with the first fiscal quarter of 2004, which ends on Sept. 30. The result, Microsoft told investors, should be larger dividends in the near future. As much as Jobs hates to admit it, he has long competed with Bill Gates -- not only for PC sales and software supremacy but also for the favor of institutional investors. The only solution for Apple now, it seems to me, is to follow Microsoft's lead and ditch Apple's dated option-compensation and dividend policies. Let's face it: If a pension fund perceives that it can get a better return at Microsoft than at Apple, either in share-price appreciation or in a dividend, it will move that money in a New York minute. BOGUS REWARDS.� Stock options are clearly a useful form of compensation when a business is growing quickly. A company can use its increasing share price to reward employees with a form of compensation that promises both riches and reduced tax burdens. And the corporations themselves can avoid a significant tax burden, since options aren't taxed up-front like standard wages. That said, if an outfit isn't growing, options represent a drag. Employees "compensated" with options at strike prices that are far higher than the actual share price feel they're getting bogus rewards. In their eyes, a bigger bonus check would be better. And if the business is losing money or making very little, options provide little tax benefit. Uncle Sam doesn't tax losses. The options just dilute the value of existing shareholder stakes. So let's look at Apple's recent profile. Over the past two years, it has remained profitable in a rough market -- but at a small fraction of the $800 million annual earnings it posted during the dot-com daze. As for growth, in 1998 Apple grossed $5.9 billion dollars -- just about what it's expected to gross this year. And its outlook is positive for the rest of the year (see BW Online, 5/21/03, "Is This the Summer of Mac?"). "ABUSED."�However, fast growth for the likes of Microsoft, Apple, and other established high-tech giants is a thing of the past. "Is Apple a small growth company that can grow out of options any more? I don't think so," says Bill Parish, a Portland (Ore.) money manager and stock-options critic. Advertisement Piling on even more options now will only anger big investors, who have watched Apple shares slide for three years. Yet, it has never lost a taste for handing out such rewards. In 2002, it gave more than 7 million options to Jobs and a million each to most of the top-level executives. This won't wash anymore, especially with big institutional investors holding over 50% of Apple stock. "They're one of the companies where stock options are not merely used but abused. It needs to be reigned in," says Ed Durkin, director of corporate relations for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC), which owns 674,000 Apple shares in its pension funds. DILUTIVE TSUNAMI.� Looking at Apple's books, it's easy to understand Durkin's concern. Approximately 10% of the shares tallied on rival Microsoft's (MSFT ) 10-K annual filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission were outstanding options. In comparison, they make up 25% of shares on Apple's 10-K. True, the average strike price on Apple's options is in the $28 range, still underwater considering that the stock is trading in the $20 range. But Apple shares are up almost 33% since the beginning of the year. If such appreciation continues, a dilutive tsunami could ensue as option bearers cash in on their unexpensed bounty. That could hinder any further share-price appreciation. And distributing still more unexpensed options would only add to investor concerns. Durkin and his brethren at the UBC filed a request at the last shareholders meeting suggesting Apple should expense its options to more accurately reflect their cost to the company. The resolution won a majority vote from shareholders. But Apple's board of directors rejected the measure, releasing a statement saying in so many nice words that, yes, it takes its shareholders seriously -- but about expensing options, forget about it. An Apple spokesperson said no one was available to comment for this story. START SHARING.� Expensing options or doing away with them isn't enough. Apple needs to start paying a dividend, too. Jobs is sitting on $4.5 billion in cash, while Apple's market capitalization stands at $7.6 billion. By comparison, Microsoft has cash reserves of $49 billion and a market capitalization of $289 billion. Yes, Apple has more cash on its books per dollar of market cap than the Croesus of tech does. So why is Jobs holding his shareholders' money so tightly? Nothing is wrong with companies keeping large cash hoards for strategic reasons -- for example, if they're looking at repurchasing lots of shares they believe to be undervalued. That's a good use of the money. But Apple isn't doing that. Or if a business is planning to make big acquisitions with an eye to increasing its value, then holding cash also is good. Apple hasn't done too much of that, either. In the past, Jobs & Co. could argue that issuing dividends created a comparatively heavier tax burden on shareholders. But with passage of the new tax bill in Washington, the eased tax burden on dividends no longer extacts such a stiff penalty. FOLLOW THAT U-TURN.� An Apple dividend at $1 per share would set the outfit back only a few hundred million dollars, according to my calculations -- barely enough to dent the loot stashed in the vaults at One Infinite Loop. It's hard to imagine that Wall Street hasn't already factored Apple's options overhang into its share-price calculations. Apple is on the right course for growth again. But if it wants to chart a path back to the $40-a-share highs of a few years ago, it should follow Microsoft's example. It should end options, expense existing ones, and start paying investors dividends. Whether Jobs likes it or not, Microsoft completely changed the valuations playing field with its policy U-turn. If Apple doesn't do likewise it risks losing the confidence of long-term shareholders that it needs to support share prices and keep its access to capital markets intact. "Apple has nominal debt and a huge pile of cash. That's incentive enough, says Alex Salkever over at Business Week to start distributing dividends to shareholders. Salkever cites the recent example of Microsoft disbursing dividends to its shareholders. There's..." =-=-= Complete article can be viewed at: http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=2391 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Copyright (c) 2003 Insanely Great Mac. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished in part or whole without explicit written permission from Insanely Great Mac. Brought to you by Insanely Great Mac <http://www.insanely-great.com/> Please visit <http://www.insanely-great.com/macnews.php> to manage your subscription (Subscribe, Digest Switch, Unsubscribe). Subscription problems/questions please email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
