This is a great time to be a startup in the broader software sector. The image below represents some of the largest public tech companies and the dollars figures shown is their respective cash on hand. This cash will be primarily used to acquire private technology startups. In total, these 10 public tech companies have $240 BILLION in cash! Go get the money!
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I thought Apple had 75B in cash.
see their 10Q Q2 filing, page 3 – http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/1334250998x0x484701/6542e771-f256-4829-8135-0b1d88c7c2b2/AAPL_Q3FY11_10Q_07.20.11.pdf
it states:
Cash and cash equivalents $ 12M
Short-term marketable securities $16.3M
Google does not break up its marketable securities into long term/short term. I am not a financial expert so it is not clear if to me as to why Apple’s long term marketable securities shouldn’t be added to it’s cash position.
I was trying to stay consistent across all the companies and use cash and short-term securities only. Once you start looking at long-term securities, then you have to stay looking at liabilities as well and didn’t want to go that path. Either way, Apple has a ton of assets to purchase startup companies.
Would be interesting to know why Apple has $48B in long term marketable securities vs. other companies that are mostly in short term marketable securities.
The one caveat here would be that some of these companies hold a large portion of their cash outside of the USA and are not willing to pay the taxes that come along with repatriating that cash. If you’re an international tech company, say Skype, that’s great for you, but for US companies the actual number of dollars out there is probably significantly lower.
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