Apple launched a $100bn share buyback plan and lifted its dividend by 16 per cent, marking the biggest increase yet in its capital returns to shareholders. Shares in the iPhone maker traded 3.5 per cent higher after hours on Tuesday as it reported a 30 per cent jump in earnings per share and announced the capital return. The world’s most valuable company issued a confident outlook for iPhone sales, despite concerns of a slowdown. Revenues for the three months to March grew 16 per cent year on year to $61.1bn, Apple said, broadly in line with Wall Street’s expectations. It sold 52.2m iPhones in the quarter, up 3 per cent on a year ago. Apple insisted that demand for the top-of-the-range iPhone X remained strong in key markets such as the US and China, and the device’s higher price helped to drive a 14 per cent increase in iPhone revenues overall. Net income was up 25 per cent to $13.8bn, with earnings per share of $2.75. After early 'fights' with the European Commission, regarding tax issues, Apple is once again being investigated by the EC due to the proposed takeover of Shazam. The commission is afraid there will be reduced choices for users of streaming services. Price for Shazam is expected to be around $400 million which Apple can easily pay out of their cash reserves. Shazam has over 1 billions users. It was a repeat of the same somewhat questionable questions from Congressmen and women who do not have a great grasp of the details of how data flows through Facebook (few do). Or it could see a harder push around a more coherent vision of regulation for social media. Mark Zuckerberg remained composed throughout yesterday but his patience may be tested if he gets the same questions for another four hours today. Facebook’s shares fell the most in four years on Monday, wiping $36.7bn off the market value of the world’s largest social network as a backlash intensified over claims it had been used to harvest the data of millions of US voters. EU lawmakers joined their UK and US counterparts by saying they would investigate reports that Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm employed by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, mined the personal data of 50m users to create profiles to target them in elections. The reports in The New York Times and The Observer say the company broke Facebook’s rules by using data collected solely for research. Apple has pledged to invest more than $30bn to expand its American operations in the wake of last month’s US tax cut, even as it makes an estimated $38bn one-off tax payment on the repatriation of its overseas profits. Breaking up is hard to do -- and so is talking about it. General Electric shares dipped below the $17 mark for the first time since 2011 a day after the industrial conglomerate revealed it was looking at shedding more parts of its sprawling corporate empire. Italian government made a deal to bailout the troubled bank for an amount of €5.4 billion euro. This is besides the earlier rescue of €17 billion to unwind the different Veneto banks by the Italian government. The EU approves this state bailout because of the transfer of bad loans to a bad bank and capping the salaries of senior managers. There will be a 5 year restructuring plan being announced later today. |
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March 2021
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