Apple’s cash reserves now stand at over $250B- WSJ report

Apple is slated to report its quarterly earnings later in the day today but even before that WSJ seems to have come up with its own calculations about Cupertino giant's humongous cash reserves that apparently now exceed over $250B. The company will report the actual number in today's earnings report.

Though, there isn't any official confirmation, but the numbers surely look in line with Apple's previously reported mark. The last number Apple reported was $246.09B as of December including cash, cash equivalents, and securities. The report says that 'Apple’s quarterly results will show the company has doubled its cash pile in just over 4 1/2 years. In the last three months of 2016, it racked up new cash at a rate of about $3.6 million an hour.'

Apple, like many big American companies, parks most of that cash offshore rather than paying U.S. taxes on its overseas profits. It was apparently Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who started the policy of stockpiling cash after the company had to be bailed out by a cash injection from Microsoft. He also believed that the company would grow its market value faster through investment in new product development than it would by buybacks and dividends.

But with the new figure of a quarter of a trillion dollars comes new pressures to spend some of it, either through acquisitions or returning more money to shareholders. While many analysts are suggesting that Apple buys on-demand video streaming giant Netflix, or electric automaker Tesla or even Disney, however Apple may be holding on to see whether the Trump administration keeps its campaign promises to allow overseas capital to be repatriated to the U.S. at a lower rate of tax.