Apple’s incoming Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri will assume the position with at least one positive trait for investors: He’s “shareholder-friendly.”
That’s the word from Wall Street insiders, who predicted Apple shareholders likely won’t have to wage another battle for a slice of the iPad maker’s bulging cash hoard — expected to reach a whopping $200 billion this year.
“I don’t think we will have battles like we’ve had over the last couple of years,” Brian White, an analyst with Cantor Fitzgerald, predicted of Maestri as CFO. “He has a reputation for being shareholder-friendly.”
On Tuesday, Apple said longtime CFO Peter Oppenheimer will retire in September to spend more time with his family and to get his pilot’s license.
Oppenheimer has been with Apple since 1996 and has been the CFO for 10 years.
Maestri, who came to Apple from Xerox last year, will fill Oppenheimer’s shoes starting in June, Apple said.
The change was expected and did little to move the stock, which closed up less than 1 percent, to $531.24.
Still, Maestri’s planned control of Apple’s checkbook appears to have reassured Wall Street that Apple won’t slow down its recent efforts to return cash to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.
“We know Maestri quite well and believe he will support consistent plans for capital return,” Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes said in a note. “Obviously, he could still increase share buybacks materially at Apple, given its [current] large cash hoard of $158.8 billion.”
Big-name investors like Carl Icahn and David Einhorn have battled Apple in recent months over its dividends — which they think are stingy.
Apple has since announced plans to buy back $60 billion of its shares over three years — the largest buyback program ever.
In February, Icahn backed off his effort to get Apple to boost its buyback program even more after CEO Tim Cook said the company unexpectedly bought $14 billion in Apple stock over a two-week period.