Apple to start paying dividend to shareholders

After years of resisting the idea, Apple has announced that it will finally start paying a dividend to shareholders.

From July, the technology company will pay a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share.

It will also buy back up to $10 billion of its own shares from September.

This is an about-turn from the days of Apple’s late former chief executive, Steve Jobs, who believed the firm could better utilise the money by ploughing it into new products.

But at the end of last year, the techno-giant revealed it had amassed $97.6 billion in cash and it expects to use $45 billion over the next three years.

Shares went up 2.7 per cent to $601.10 on Monday, following a leap of 37 per cent since January when Apple first hinted that a dividend may be on the cards.

By comparison, the company’s shares were trading at around $10 a decade ago.

Chief executive Tim Cook said: “We have used some of our cash to make great investments in our business through increased research and development, acquisitions, new retail store openings, strategic prepayments and capital expenditures in our supply chain, and building out our infrastructure.

“Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business. So we are going to initiate a dividend and share repurchase programme.”