Amid all the bad news concerning tax issues there seems to be a little moment of joy for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). The iPhone maker’s recent bond issuance helped the company to save more than $724 million in interest on the debt it incurred, says a report from Bloomberg by Mary Childs. It’s debatable whether the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was lucky with the issuance or it was just sheer smartness on the part of management that the issuance was completed just before the market for bonds began to turn.
The Cupertino based company issued bonds worth $17 billion with an objective to return $100 billion to shareholders by 2015. The issue was the first of its kind by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in 17 years. The bond issue from Apple beat the previous best by half a billion dollars, issued by .
Both, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s gave the offering the second-highest possible rating.
Good timing For Apple
The timing for bond issuance was also good from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), allowing the company to avail low yields resulting in an initial saving of $40 million in annual interest payments on the six bonds it sold, notes Bloomberg. The day Apple issued the bonds, the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds was 1.67 percent versus 2.13 percent, by the end of last week.
Had the company issued the bonds on May 31, it would have lost about $396.9 million in annual interest costs.
An executive of the world’s biggest fixed-income fund told that the three-decade-long Bull Run in the bonds ended just a day before Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) came out with its offering.
“That’s real money, even to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL),” one money manager reportedly said. “I don’t know if it was insight or luck, but they timed the market very well.”
Debt with many benefits
The savings from the offering are, in addition to the tax savings that inspired the bond offering initially. The debt helped the company to save on $9.2 billion in taxes. The $17 billion debt allowed Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to increase its quarterly dividend and repurchase shares, which gave some support to stock price that has been declining in recent months.
iPhone maker’s Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer, who is also the highest paid CFO in the world told that including debt in the capital structure will eventually benefit the company.
During the company’s quarterly earnings conference call, CFO told “We will maintain sufficient domestic liquidity” and the new capital structure will “result in returning an average of $30 billion annually to shareholders.”
