Shareholders vs employees

Many large companies with excess cash do share buybacks or offer a dividend. Both of these are intended to benefit shareholders. However, the waters are muddied in that some employees are also shareholders.

Let’s look at the numbers for Apple.

Cook said that Apple had returned $27.5 billion to shareholders last quarter

Apple […] also approved a 77 cent dividend per share.

Apple stock spikes after reporting strong guidance and earnings beat—CNBC—April 30, 2019

As of September 29, 2018 , the Company had approximately 132,000 full-time equivalent employees.

Apple Form 10K—SEC—September 29, 2018

I’ll extrapolate a little since I couldn’t find complete numbers.

1. $27.5 billion x 4 quarters = $110 billion in yearly share repurchase

2. 77 cents x 4.72 billion shares x 4 quarters = $14.5 billion annual dividend

3. $110 billion + $14.5 billion = $124.5 billion given to shareholders yearly

Divide that by the number of employees. Check my math and let me know if I got it wrong.

$943,181 per employee per year

Gasp.

Le…