Apple's problem: what to do with a mountain of cash?

THE best movie share tip was in Forrest Gump - where Tom Hanks' character invested in Apple, which he described as ''some fruit company''.

And the guileless Gump might be puzzled about the company today. After you take over the world, after you hold all the money, then what?

This week Apple announced yet another record profit, numbers so large as to become rather meaningless: gross revenue of $US46 billion ($A43.3 billion), cashflow of $US17.5 billion, a net profit of $US13.6 billion, more than double last year's result. And these figures are just for the December quarter, a mere three month's worth of i-gadgets.

Apple's profit margin was 28 per cent - what Ken Henry would describe as a ''super profit'' and therefore deserving of an extra tax, not that the financially strained American government is capable of thinking along those lines. What's even more astounding is that Apple is sitting on cash reserves of $US97.6 billion. With sales for this quarter conservatively forecast to be $US32.5 billion, the spare change will tip it over the neat $US100 billion mark well before March 31.

The thing is that Apple is typical of a class of (mainly) American companies that aren't interested in old-fashioned capitalism in the sense of investing money, making a profit, reinvesting some in the business and rewarding investors with the rest via dividends. Apple pays no dividend at all, the profits just keep going under the corporate mattress, mainly outside the US, building up those massive reserves - for what? Are they going to buy a country somewhere?

The possibility of Apple paying dividends has generated speculation for years, but it's yet to happen. The CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, last week only said the company was ''actively discussing'' how to use its mountain of cash, uses which ''could'' include supply chain investments, acquisitions or ''other investments''.

Like Microsoft and others before it, Apple's growth will eventually bring anti-trust restraints, limiting its ability to use the cash for major takeovers. (And mentioning Microsoft, the company now pays a little dividend but still has reserves of around $US60 billion after reporting a $US6.6 billion December quarter profit on sales of $US20.9 billion - a 32 per cent profit margin, even better than Apple's.)

The Wall Street attitude to dividends has been very different to that of Australian investors. As one American corporate type with the ''problem'' of excess cash told me, many US analysts see dividends as a sign of management weakness, that the people at the top can't think of anything better to do with the money and the share price is correspondingly marked down.

Australians' love of dividends is partly fuelled by our imputation credits (effectively a refund of corporate tax to domestic shareholders), but Americans enjoy generously concessional dividend tax rates - just ask Mitt Romney with his 13.9 per cent tax rate on income of $US21.6 million in 2010.