Tech giant Apple has taken another bite out of the the United States investment-grade bond market to the tune of $6.5 billion with a sale in four parts as it seeks to return cash to shareholders.
According to a prospectus, there will be 40-year, 30-year, 10-year and 7-year notes. Bloomberg reports the 40-year offering will yield 0.92 percentage points above Treasuries.
S&P Global Ratings assigned a AA+ rating to the proposed bonds.
“As Apple’s debt continues to climb, we anticipate net cash to fall by more than $70 billion over the next few years, after cash had declined by $91 billion since the company initiated a more aggressive shareholder-return policy in 2018,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Robert Schiffman wrote Thursday.
In February, it was reported that Apple, despite its huge hoardings of cash reserves, had sold $US14 billion of bonds in order to take advantage of cheap costs for borrowing.
Bloomberg reports that Apple continues to make significant investments to support long-term growth. It generated $21 billion of operating cash flow and returned $29 billion to shareholders during the third quarter.
