Expansion or a nice dividend?

There’s a lot Apple can do with its $256.8B in cash

Ideally, Apple would use its cash hoard to make acquisitions that add value to the company. Apple could easily buy a major media outlet such as Time Warner or Viacom, a content-distribution platform such as Netflix,

and a music-streaming company such as SiriusXM or Pandora — and still have cash left over to give its shareholders a big one-time dividend payment.

I’m not saying any of these would necessarily be in the best interests of Apple investors, but the point is that the company could do it.

The problem is where Apple’s cash is. The vast majority of Ap- ple’s cash stockpile — 94% at the end of 2016 — is held overseas. If it were to bring the cash back to the U.S., it would need to pay hefty repatriation taxes.

President Trump, as well as Republican leaders in Congress, have expressed support for a repatriation tax holiday with a onetime rate of 10%.

The bottom line is that if a repatriation holiday takes place, it’s a safe bet that Apple won’t be sitting on a quarter-trillion-dollar mountain of cash for much longer. Until then, however, Apple feels that repatriation of its foreign profits simply isn’t in the company’s best interest.