{"id":262709,"date":"2010-02-01T18:05:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T23:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"e2249889-c78b-43e3-9643-b1d7d4aa587b:389885"},"modified":"2010-02-01T18:05:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T23:05:00","slug":"tightwad-techs-should-get-up-off-their-cash-and-offer-dividends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/262709","title":{"rendered":"Tightwad techs should get up off their cash and offer dividends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why are so many companies sitting on cash? Apple Inc., Google Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., eBay Inc., Dell Inc. and DirectTV Group Inc. are all tightwads that can and should be paying a dividend, says <a href=\"http:\/\/online.barrons.com\/article\/SB126481817546137663.html\" >Andrew Bary of Barron\u2019s<\/a>. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The cash hoard is particularly large at Apple, which has almost US$40-billion of cash in the bank and no debt. There is also lots of spare change jingling in the pockets of Google (US$24.5-billion) and Cisco (US$25.1-billion). But the problem extends far beyond those firms, Bary says. Fifteen of the top 100 members of the S&amp;P 500, ranked by stock-market value, pay no dividend.<\/p>\n<p>The mountains of cash might be understandable if the firms that owned them were gearing up for acquisitions, but many are firms that pride themselves on growing through internal innovation, rather than by buying others. <\/p>\n<p>Bary suggests one explanation of their hoarding tendencies is perception. Tech investors especially have been brought up to believe that growth companies don\u2019t pay dividends. <\/p>\n<p>Another explanation is that managers don\u2019t want to commit themselves to paying a regular dividend. They would prefer to reward shareholders through stock buybacks, which can be increased or decreased as circumstances require.<\/p>\n<p>Bary urges management to reconsider. He argues that the neglect of dividends punishes ordinary shareholders who would like a steady stream of cash from their holdings. There is no reason that companies can\u2019t both buy back stock and pay a dividend.<\/p>\n<p><i>Freelance business journalist Ian McGugan blogs for the Financial Post. <\/i><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/network.nationalpost.com\/np\/aggbug.aspx?PostID=389885\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why are so many companies sitting on cash? Apple Inc., Google Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., eBay Inc., Dell Inc. and DirectTV Group Inc. are all tightwads that can and should be paying a dividend, says Andrew Bary of Barron\u2019s. &nbsp; The cash hoard is particularly large at Apple, which has almost US$40-billion of cash in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4062,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4062"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}