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原标题:Apple Now Borrows Free Money苹果公司现在免费借钱 来源:腾讯自选股综合
Summary
Company issued Euro debt at 0% coupon.
Possibility of negative coupon debt in future.
Shares hit new all time high.
On Monday, shares of technology giant Apple (AAPL) hit a new all-time high. If that sounds familiar, it should be, since the stock has been doing that almost every day during the last couple of weeks as the chart below shows. With a market cap approaching $1.2 trillion dollars, the size of this company is truly impressive. Apple's strength combined with some easy money fiscal policy around the globe allowed the company to do something last week that may not have seemed possible before.
(Source: Yahoo! Finance)
During Apple's fiscal 2012 year, the company started a new capital return program to return capital to shareholders. With the company's cash pile soaring to new heights, investors wanted a piece of the pie and thus a quarterly dividend was started along with share repurchase program. These two items have been the main parts of a historic plan that has returned over $407 billion in capital to shareholders since.
For a time, Apple was issuing debt to fund this plan, since most of its cash was located outside the US. For the company to use its foreign funds, it would have needed to repatriate them and pay a sizable tax, which management was against. With interest rates rather low in historical terms, it was a lot better to borrow than to pay the tax. That changed a bit with the 2017 US tax plan, and the company hasn't issued too much debt since. In fact, as the most recent quarter shows through the yearly cash flow statement, Apple paid back more debt in its latest fiscal year than it issued in total.
The company is still issuing debt from time to time, however, and last week it did something many may not have thought possible for most of the company's history:Apple was able to issue a Euro-denominated bond with a 0.000% coupon.In the table below, I've detailed four of these Euro debts seen during the capital return plan to show you the company's rate history.
(Source: Prospectuses for each set of bonds: November 2014, September 2015, May 2017, November 2019)
Now if you want to be truly argumentative, you can technically say that this money was not entirely free. Apple did have to pay underwriting expenses to issue this debt and the public offering price was not 100% of par, so the 2025 notes will cost Apple a few million Euros in total. However, when you are issuing a billion Euros worth, that's basically nothing, and the key part here is that the coupon was zero. That means no interest payments to bondholders.
Bond investors around the globe have become familiar with zero or even negative interest rate bonds recently, but they have mainly been on a country level. Japan and Germany are two countries where bonds with maturities of 10 years or less currently have negative rates, while France is up to 9 years. While Apple is certainly a large company, it's not exactly the size of those countries, so to see a zero coupon corporate bond is a bit of a different story.
In the end, how strong is Apple? Well, the company is in such good shape currently that it was able to issue a six year Euro-denominated bond last week with a zero coupon. Even with very low interest rates around the globe, most companies still have to pay some sort of risk premium, which makes getting rates near zero very hard for many. While Apple may not issue another set of Euro bonds in the near term, I'll be watching to see if the next round comes with a negative coupon, where investors will actually be paying the company to hold their money.
Disclosure:I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Additional disclosure:Investors are always reminded that before making any investment, you should do your own proper due diligence on any name directly or indirectly mentioned in this article. Investors should also consider seeking advice from a broker or financial adviser before making any investment decisions. Any material in this article should be considered general information, and not relied on as a formal investment recommendation.
发明内容
公司发行欧元债券,票面利率为0%。
未来可能出现负息票债务。
股价创历史新高。
周一,科技巨头苹果(Apple)的股价创下历史新高。如果这听起来很熟悉,应该是,因为股票在过去的几周里几乎每天都在这样做,如下面的图表所示。随着市值接近1.2万亿美元,这家公司的规模确实令人印象深刻。苹果的实力,加上全球范围内一些宽松的货币财政政策,使得该公司上周做了一些以前似乎不可能做到的事情。
(来源:雅虎!金融)
在苹果2012财年,该公司启动了一项新的资本返还计划,将资本返还给股东。随着公司的现金储备飙升到新的高度,投资者想要分一杯羹,因此季度股息与股票回购计划一起开始。这两个项目一直是一项历史性计划的主要部分,自那以来,该计划已向股东返还了超过4070亿美元的资本。
有一段时间,苹果发行债券为这个计划提供资金,因为它的大部分现金都位于美国以外。对于该公司来说,要使用它的外国资金,它将需要将这些资金汇回国内,并支付一大笔税款,这是管理层所反对的。在历史利率相当低的情况下,借钱比交税要好得多。随着2017年美国税收计划的出台,这种情况有所改变,自那以来,该公司就没有发行太多债券。事实上,正如最近一个季度的年度现金流量表所显示的那样,苹果在最近一个财年偿还的债务比它发行的总额还多。
然而,该公司仍在不时地发行债券,上周它做了一件许多人可能在公司历史上大部分时间都想不到的事情:苹果能够以0.000%的票面利率发行欧元计价债券。在下表中,我详细介绍了资本回报计划中看到的四项欧元债务,以向您展示公司的利率历史。
(来源:每套债券的招股说明书:2014年11月,2015年9月,2017年5月,2019年11月)
现在,如果你想真正的争辩,你可以从技术上说,这笔钱不是完全免费的。苹果确实需要支付发行这笔债券的承销费用,而且公开发行的价格不是面值的100%,所以2025年的债券将总共花费苹果几百万欧元。然而,当你发行价值10亿欧元的债券时,这基本上是零,这里的关键部分是息票为零。这意味着不会向债券持有人支付利息。
最近,全球的债券投资者已经熟悉了零利率甚至负利率债券,但它们主要是在国家层面上。日本和德国是两个期限不超过10年的债券目前利率为负值的国家,而法国的利率高达9年。虽然苹果确实是一家大公司,但它的规模并不完全是这些国家的规模,所以看到零息票公司债券是一个有点不同的故事。
苹果到底有多强?那么,该公司目前的状况非常好,以至于它能够在上周发行六年期欧元计价债券,票面利率为零。即使全球利率非常低,大多数公司仍然需要支付某种风险溢价,这使得许多公司很难获得接近零的利率。虽然苹果公司可能不会在短期内发行另一套欧元债券,但我将观察下一轮是否会出现负面票面利率,投资者实际上将向该公司支付持有他们资金的费用。
披露:我/我们在提到的任何股票中没有头寸,也没有计划在接下来的72小时内启动任何头寸。这篇文章是我自己写的,它表达了我自己的观点。我没有得到它的补偿(除了寻求阿尔法)。我与本文中提到股票的任何公司都没有业务关系。
额外披露:始终提醒投资者,在进行任何投资之前,您应该对本文中直接或间接提到的任何名称进行适当的尽职调查。投资者在作出任何投资决定前,亦应考虑向经纪或财务顾问寻求意见。本文中的任何材料都应该被视为一般信息,而不是作为正式投资推荐的依据。
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