Associated Press Apple announced a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share and authorized a share buyback plan this morning. 
 
 According to the release, it anticipates spending about $45 billion in cash over the first three years of the dividend and buyback plan. 
 
 The buyback authorization is worth $10 billion and starts in fiscal 2013, which starts after September 30, 2012. (Important note: a buyback authorization doesn't mean Apple is going to rush out and buy stock, it just means it could buy stock.) 
 
 The dividend starts in fiscal Q4, which is after July 1, 2012. 
 
 The $45 billion Apple anticipates spending will be less than a third of the cash it will bring in over the next three years. (We anticipate it generating ~$150 billion in cash in the next three years.) 
 
 Apple shares have been halted, and will start trading again at 8:50 eastern. 
 
 Here's the release: 
 
 Apple® today announced plans to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program commencing later this year. 
 
 Subject to declaration by the Board of Directors, the Company plans to initiate a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share sometime in the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2012, which begins on July 1, 2012. 
 
 Additionally, the Company's Board of Directors has authorized a $10 billion share repurchase program commencing in the Company's fiscal 2013, which begins on September 30, 2012. The repurchase program is expected to be executed over three years, with the primary objective of neutralizing 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." 

 NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Apple on Monday announced plans for much of the $97.6 billion in cash it has accumulated from massive iPod, iPhone, iPad and Macintosh sales. 
 
 The company said it would begin giving shareholders a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share sometime its fiscal fourth quarter, which begins in July. Apple last offered a dividend in 1995. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) will also buy back $10 billion of its own shares over three years, beginning in October. 
 
 "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," Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, said in a prepared statement. 
 
 "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," he added. 
 
 Stock repurchases generally help companies inflate their earnings per share because it reduces the number of shares outstanding. But profit growth has rarely been a problem for Apple, which routinely blows past Wall Street analysts' quarterly earnings forecasts. 
 
 Apple said the share buybacks will help stave off earnings-per-share dilution from future employee stock grants and purchase programs. 
 
 The company said it expects the dividend to cost the company $2.5 billion per quarter, making it one of the largest dividend payers in the United States. Combined with the repurchase program, Apple said it will likely utilize $45 billion of its domestic cash through 2015. 
 
 It's significant that Apple is using its domestic cash, rather than the much heftier stockpiles it holds overseas, because foreign cash would be subject to a sizable "repatriation tax" if brought back into the United States. Cook said the company didn't want to pay that tax. 
 
 Shares of Apple rose just less than 3% to close at an all-time high of $601.10. 
 
 Growth at Apple has not been a problem: The company is on pace to become the largest technology company in the world by revenue, and during the holiday season it posted the second-most profitable quarter by any corporation in U.S. history. 
 
 Nevertheless, Apple is actively looking for new investors. Some fund managers have stopped buying shares as Apple's stock price has soared. But many funds require a dividend from the stocks they invest in, so they have had to stay away from Apple. 
 
 "Investors have been wresting with the question of, 'Who is left to buy the stock?'" said Alex Gauna, tech analyst at JMP Securities. 
 
 Cook said he hopes the dividend will open up Apple's stock to a new investor base. 
 
 Apple's dividend yield -- the percentage of a company's share price that it pays out in annual dividends -- is currently 1.8%. That's higher than the dividend yields of other technology giants, such as IBM (IBM, Fortune 500), Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500) and Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500), but it's lower than the yields of more direct rivals like Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500). 
 
 Apple's dividend yield is nearly twice the average for the tech companies in the S&P 500, but a bit less than the 2.1% average for the overall S&P 500. 

 Stock Chart for Apple Inc (AAPL) 
 
 Apple Inc. (AAPL) will pay its first dividend in 17 years and buy back $10 billion in stock, heeding investors who urged it to return part of the $97.6 billion in cash amassed by robust demand for iPhones and iPads. 
 
 Shareholders will receive a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share starting in the period beginning July 1, Cupertino, California-based Apple said today in a statement. The buybacks will begin in the fiscal year starting Sept. 30 and happen over three years, the company said. 
 
 Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is showing more willingness than co-founder Steve Jobs to channel part of cash and investments directly to investors. The move will cost $45 billion over three years, Cook said, and may broaden Apple’s shareholding base by attracting fund managers who only hold dividend-paying companies. 
 
 “It was high time to do this,” said David Rolfe, chief investment officer of Wedgewood Partners Inc., which holds Apple shares. 
 
 The dividend will cost Apple about $10 billion a year and represents a yield of 1.8 percent on the stock’s closing price today. The company generated $16 billion in cash in the first quarter of fiscal 2012, which ended in December. Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach Inc., predicts that Apple will generate about $75 billion in cash this year. 
 
 Apple rose 2.7 percent to $601.10, closing above $600 a share for the first time. 
 
 Top 10 Yield 
 
 “This is something that large shareholders have been asking for,” Wu said before the announcement. 
 
 Including instances where a company has scrapped and re- established dividends, today’s was the largest initiation for a company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, surpassing Cisco Systems Inc.’s announcement of a $1.3 billion dividend in March 2011. Apple’s move pushed the dividend yield of the benchmark gauge of American equities to 2.14 percent, from 2.06 percent, Howard Silverblatt, S&P’s senior index analyst, said in an interview. 
 
 Apple’s dividend may provide a short-lived boost to some pockets of the economy, said Richard Sichel, CIO of Philadelphia Trust Co., which manages $1.6 billion and holds Apple in some funds. 
 
 “More than anything, it’s a psychological boost,” Sichel said. 
 
 At 1.8 percent, the yield on Apple’s dividend would be the tenth-highest among U.S. technology companies with market values larger than $10 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show. 
 
 Intel, Microsoft Higher 
 
 It’s lower than that offered by Intel Corp., which yields 3.03 percent, based on today’s closing price, and Microsoft Corp., which yields 2.48 percent on that basis. It tops Cisco’s dividend yield of 1.59 percent and International Business Machines Corp.’s 1.46 percent yield. 
 
 After today’s announcement, Google Inc., owner of the most popular search engine, is now the only technology company with a market value of more than $100 billion that doesn’t offer a dividend. 
 
 The growing amount of money on Apple’s balance sheet followed the introduction of the iPhone, the best-selling smartphone, and the iPad, the leading tablet computer. The company last week began selling a third-generation iPad, which comes with a high-definition screen and faster processor. Apple sold more than 3 million iPads on its debut weekend, a record, Apple said in a separate statement today. 
 
 “It’s literally become a cash machine,” said Charlie Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Co. in New York. 
 
 Contrast With Jobs 
 
 Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos., said Jobs, who died in October, resisted efforts to get Apple to return money to shareholders. 
 
 “It would have been unheard of under Jobs’s watch,” said Munster. “This is just finance 101, but it looks like rocket science next to what they’ve done in the past.” 
 
 Of Apple’s $97.6 billion in cash and investments at the end of December, about $64 billion was overseas. Oppenheimer said Apple will only use money held in the U.S. for the dividend and buyback to avoid tax consequences. 
 
 A dividend is a boon to shareholders, including Apple employees, who have already seen the company’s stock rise 48 percent this year. 
 
 Fidelity Management, Apple’s largest shareholder, will make $128.81 million each quarter from the dividend, based on its holdings as of Dec. 31. Vanguard Group Inc., the second-biggest shareholder, will receive $98.54 million and State Street Corp. will make $92.12 million. 
 
 ‘War Chest’ 
 
 “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,” Cook said in the statement. “Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business.” 
 
 On the conference call, Cook said adding a dividend will expand Apple’s investor pool. Some investors will only buy shares in companies that pay a dividend. 
 
 Apple last paid a dividend in 1995, before Jobs returned as CEO and led the introduction of top-selling products including the iPod, iPhone and iPad. The final dividend, of 12 cents a share, was suspended amid leadership upheaval and dwindling computer-market share. According to a company filing, Apple’s cash, equivalents and short-term investments dropped by about half, to $491 million, in the year through Sept. 29, 1995. 
 
 Highlighting its turnaround since that period, Apple has surpassed Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) as the world’s most valuable company. The iPhone maker’s market value is $560.4 billion, based on today’s closing price. That compares with $410 billion for Exxon Mobil. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Adam Satariano in San Francisco at asatariano1@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net
– Apple shareholders ought to be even happier with the company than usual this morning, as the gadgets giant announced plans to spend $45 billion of its $97 billion in cash reserves on a buyback and a dividend program. Of that, $10 billion will go to a buyback authorization—though Business Insider cautions that Apple has merely given itself the option to buy back shares, not actually committed to doing so. The rest of the money will go to a $2.65-per-share quarterly dividend, which will start in its fiscal fourth quarter, which begins July 1. It's the first dividend Apple has offered since 1995, notes CNN. CEO Tim Cook promised that the plan wouldn't hurt Apple's investments in research and development, retail stores, and other companies. "Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business," he said in a statement. On a conference call, Cook added that the moves would bring in new investors who only buy dividend-yielding stocks, according to Bloomberg.