Foreign Parents
It excluded companies such as Eaton Corp. Plc that now have foreign parents, and it also excluded United Technologies Corp., which disclosed a $22 billion balance this year and hadn’t reported the numbers before then.
The analysis relies on the most recent filings for the companies. Those with fiscal years that end Dec. 31 filed their 10-Ks over the past few weeks.
Apple, whose stock has fallen 38.7 percent from its Sept. 19 closing high of $702.10, has been under pressure to return cash to investors in the form a dividend or buyback. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has said the money isn’t burning a hole in the company’s pockets and that it’s considering different strategies to reward investors with a new payout.
A reason for the overseas cash growth can be linked in part to Apple’s performance. Sales in Asia, Europe and Australia rose 43.7 percent to $80.2 billion in fiscal 2012. Unlike most other U.S.-based companies, Apple has already taken accounting charges for eventual taxes on some of its unrepatriated foreign holdings and reports an associated deferred tax liability of $14.7 billion.
Cash Holdings
The company’s permanently reinvested overseas earnings were $40.4 billion while its foreign cash holdings were $82.6 billion, as of Sept. 29, 2012.
Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple, declined to comment.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked some companies, including Google, to assert that they have enough liquidity in the U.S. to justify their contention that the offshore money will stay overseas indefinitely.
Google wrote in its annual filing that $31.4 billion, or 65.3 percent, of its liquid holdings were outside the U.S.