Apple paying dividends, buying back stock, selling lots of iPads

Apple will pay out a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share of stock, the company announced today, and has authorized a stock buy back program worth $10 billion. The buy back (which doesn’t mean Apple WILL be buying back stock, just that it has authorized that program should it choose to launch it) will start in fiscal 2013, after September 2012. The dividend will pay out starting in Q4 of this year, after July 1. Reaction to this seems to be that Apple is behaving pretty conservatively in terms of the size of the dividend and how large the buy back program is.

As part of the announcement for all that money stuff, Apple also said that it sold a ��record” number of iPads over the weekend. How many? Didn’t say. Analysts had estimated sales would be anywhere from 1 million to 2.5 million. Thanks a lot, analysts. Big help. Way to stick your neck out.