iLounge

Apple announced this morning that it plans to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program later this year. According to the announcement, the company plans to offer a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share sometime in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2012, which begins on July 1. In addition, Apple’s Board of Directors has authorized a $10 billion share repurchase program to begin during its fiscal 2013, which begins on September 30, 2012. The repurchase program will be executed over three years, with the primary goal being to neutralize the impact of dilution from future employee equity grants and employee stock purchase programs.

“We have used some of our cash to make great investments in our business through increased research and development, acquisitions, new retail store openings, strategic prepayments and capital expenditures in our supply chain, and building out our infrastructure. You’ll see more of all of these in the future,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business. So we are going to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program.”

“Combining dividends, share repurchases, and cash used to net-share-settle vesting RSUs, we anticipate utilizing approximately $45 billion of domestic cash in the first three years of our programs,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “We are extremely confident in our future and see tremendous opportunities ahead.”

Apple will hold a conference call at 6:00 a.m. Pacific Time/9:00 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss its plans.