Apple's Stockpile of Cash Has Now Topped $250 Billion

Apple is expected to announce tomorrow that its stockpile of cash has has topped $250 billion, reports the WSJ. That's larger than the foreign-currency reserves held by the U.K. and Canada combined.

Apple’s quarterly results will show the company has doubled its cash in just over 4½ years. In the last three months of 2016, it racked up cash at a rate of about $3.6 million an hour. As of December, the company had $246.09 billion total cash, cash equivalents, and securities. 

Apple holds 90% of its cash reserves outside of the United States so it doesn't need to pay U.S. taxes on its overseas profits. President Trump has proposed one-time tax holiday for companies repatriating funds. That could be beneficial to shareholders and allow Apple to more easily make a large acquisition. 

Notably, Apple CFO Luca Maestri has said that bringing the money back into the United States would give Apple flexibility to do more capital returns perhaps via a special dividend.

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