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Comment by jonknee | Hacker News Reader

They have $25B in cash or short term investments sitting around ($11B in cash or equivalents): http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL&fstype=ii

They have invested pretty heavily in facilities/equipment, growing from $2.8B to $7.2B over the past four years. I'd imagine that's stuff like their giant new data center and partnership agreements in their Asian operations. Where they really bulked up is "Long Term Investments". None four years ago, $25B today (and just $10B last year). Unsure what that would entail...

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I think they have closer to 50B in the bank. They were definitely north of 40 all of last year.

Unless Apple lied in their SEC filings and in doing so risked jail time for high level executives, I think you're mistaken. There are different designations for assets, but the "Cash and Short Term Investments" portion is $25B. Cash makes up $11.2B of that total. They have a little over $75B in total assets, which counts some less liquid assets like property and long term investments.

Most of their "long term securities" are actually short term by any reasonable meaning of the word. It's just a technical terminology thing for filings that doesn't mean what you assume it means. They have been north of 40 billion for a while.

The relevant thing is how much is liquid fast enough to use it for what they want to use it for. For that we should listen to Apple telling us directly (which they have repeatedly done), not just check some field on their govt filings.

> For that we should listen to Apple telling us directly (which they have repeatedly done), not just check some field on their govt filings.

Between trusting a company on what they claim and what they actually report, I'd go with what they report. That's what's legally binding. Not that the final result is much different, cash isn't an obstacle in whatever Apple wants to do (and hasn't been in quite some time).

You aren't listening. You're taking a field on a report which means X rather than Apple's statement about their Y. They are NOT THE SAME THING. You're simply looking up the WRONG STATISTIC from an official source and saying it trumps A DIFFERENT STATISTIC from another source.

Financial reports use phrases that sound like common sense things but actually have precisely defined meanings that are not equivalent to what they sound like they mean. Basically it's excluding a great deal of Apple's liquid assets because they don't fall under a specific definition.

No sense in arguing over something that is easily accessible (see Note 2 to the financial statements): http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/00011931251023...

Total cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as of 9/25/2010 = $51.011 billion.

50B in the bank? They must be buying Facebook.

Long term investments is more or less anything that they intend to hold for more than a year, including equity stakes in other companies. With their continuing large cash position, large cash inflows and quick accumulation in the category it's possible that they've been buying a combination of junk and t-bills.

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