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Apple’s latest major acquisition: Apple

Published Jul 25th, 2013 9:30AM EDT
Apple Stock Buyback Q3 2013

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Analysts and pundits regularly state that Apple “needs” to use some of its growing cash pile on major acquisitions. Yahoo recently spent $1.1 billion to acquire TumblrGoogle reportedly spent more than $1 billion on its recent Waze buy… where are the massive Apple deals? As Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt points out, Apple outspent all other major tech companies by a huge margin last quarter on a major acquisition. What did it buy? Apple.

“By my calculation, the company spent $16 billion last quarter ($4 billion in cash, $12 billion through the so-called accelerated share repurchase program) to purchase 36 million of its own shares at an average price of just over $444,” Elmer-DeWitt wrote, noting that for the same amount of money it could have acquired Nokia, or the company could have spent a third as much to acquire BlackBerry.

Apple announced this past April that is was boosting its massive stock buyback program by $50 billion. A recent regulatory filing stated that about 22 million of the newly repurchased shares were retired last quarter, leaving Apple with 908 million shares outstanding. The rest will be retired in the current quarter.

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.