Apple announced historic quarterly results this week: record revenue of $91.8 billion, and record net income of $22.2 billion.
Apple also announced that it spent $20 billion on a strategy that is provably bad for shareholder value.
This past quarter the company “returned” nearly $25 billion to shareholders, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said. That includes $3.5 billion in dividends and equivalents, and a whopping $20 billion in share repurchasing. Apple’s stated goal is to reach a “net cash neutral position over time,” he said, meaning the company’s massive quarter trillion dollars worth of cash on hand all has to go.