Richest technology companies  

Even as many US companies struggle to stay solvent in one of the worst financial crises in decades, some technology companies are bursting with cash, with the only question being how they plan to use it. Fitch estimates that the US tech industry is carrying a cash balance of around $260 billion, one of the largest among all sectors.

"There's a strong emphasis on the preservation of liquidity, but we think the larger players will use their balance sheets and use their cash balances to ignite mergers and acquisition activity," said Fitch Ratings analyst Nick Nilarp.

The old cliche that cash is king is never more true than in bad times. So as investors navigate tough financial markets, the cash hoards held by tech companies could make their shares more attractive and bolster the argument made by some analysts that the sector will lead the way out of the downturn.

Here are some of the technology companies with huge cash piles.


Cisco Systems Inc is the most cash-rich tech company with $29.5 billion in hand, putting it just behind Exxon Mobil Corp's $31.4 billion, despite having a market value less than one-quarter of the oil giant's.

The company has been rather upfront about its plans to use some of this cash to make acquisitions. Cisco has said it plans to be acquisitive during the economic downturn, and bankers and analysts think it may make a move on virtualisation software maker VMware Inc or its parent EMC Corp.

Taking advantage of loosening credit markets, Cisco recently made a surprisingly large $4 billion debt sale. The company stated that it intends to use the recent debt sale "for general corporate purposes" and to repay $500 million in notes due in 2009.


Another tech company with some of the largest cash piles includes Apple Inc with $25.6 billion. In spite of spending about $2bn a year on R&D and capital investment, Apple's $26bn in cash has left it with the biggest cash pile in the technology world -- a big contrast to the last downturn, which it started with less than $4bn. The cash now accounts for about a third of its market value.

The company's stock price too has rebounded from its low of $78.20 in the week when Steve Jobs announced his leave. The realisation that Apple's cash can be a big strength during recession has quieted critics, who in the past have called on the company to buy back shares or offer a dividend.


Microsoft Corp too sits on a huge cash pile of $20.7 billion. The rich software giant, however, announced rather disappointing quarterly results recently, unlike IBM. Microsoft recently announced that its Q2 2009 profit sank from $4.71bn a year ago to $4.17bn, a loss of 12 percent. Total revenue was $16.63bn, a 2 per cent rise from year before. This was only possible thanks to higher server, tools and entertainment sales. Client sales revenue, which includes Windows products, fell 8 percent.

The company may have missed the analysts’ target, however, the fact is it is still posting big profits -- $4.17B in profit is enough to make even some of the biggest companies drool.


The search giant Google Inc too sits pretty with a cash reserve of $15.9 billion. The Mountain View, California-based company had almost $16 billion in cash at the end of the recent-announced fourth quarter.

According to Google CFO, Patrick Pichette, the cash reserves provided Google with sufficient flexibility "for the right deal at the right price."

Google said its Q4 earnings declined to $382 million, far below the $1.2 billion it earned in the prior-year's fourth quarter. The fall was attributed to losses from Google's investments in AOL and Clearwire Corp.


International Business Machines Corp too has a huge cash pile. In January the company disclosed its full-year financial results for 2008: record revenue of $103.6 billion; record pre-tax profit of $16.7 billion; record earnings per share of $8.93; and record free cash flow of $14.3 billion, up $1.9 billion, excluding global financing receivables.

For IBM it is not just the huge cash pile it is sitting on, the year 2008 also saw the IT giant register strongest revenue growth since 2003 and the strongest profit performance in more than a decade. IBM also announced an earnings’ forecast for the coming year at $9.20 a share, well above Wall Street's $8.75 call.


The enterprise software giant Oracle too sits on a $7.4 billion pile of cash. Little doubt that the Redwood Shores-based company is quietly going on a shopping spree.

The software giant completed as many as 10 acquisitions in 2008, ranging from a maker of insurance policy-writing tools, to a designer of `plan-o-gram' software (the software used by stores to optimise shelf space usage). Recently, the company bought mValent Inc, a small software company that helps configure other software. The deals put Oracle in the club of cash-rich companies bargain hunting amid the present economic turmoil.

Oracle made sales of $22.4 billion in fiscal 2008. However, the company hasn't been unscathed from the slump, it recently reported a 1 per cent drop in net income, the first decline in three years.


Sun Microsystems might be facing hard times. The company’s stock has been faced considerable hammering in the past few months further accentuated by fears of weakening global tech spending. However, Sun Microsystems too is among the companies with a relatively large amount of cash. The company carries a cash balance of $2.6 billion and a market cap of $3.8 billion.

The high-end computer and software maker posted better-than-expected results as a strong software and open storage business cushioned declining overall sales.

Like much of the industry, the company is now struggling to slash costs as tech spending dissipates globally. It said in November it would cut 5,000 to 6,000 jobs, or 15 to 18 percent of its workforce, as part of a plan to save $700 million to $800 million a year.


Hopkinton-based EMC Corp's fourth quarter profit though fell 45 percent, the company said that it increased its cash reserves by 9 per cent.

In Q4, EMC's profits fell from $526 million to $288 million, on restructuring charges. For the full year, the company reported revenue of $14.9 billion, a 12 percent increase over the prior year, and a profit of $1.4 billion, a 14 percent increase over 2007.

The data storage giant's fourth quarter revenue hit $4 billion, an increase of 8 percent over the third quarter and 5 percent over the fourth quarter of 2007. EMC announced recently that it would lay off about 2,400 employees, 600 of them in Massachusetts.

While these tech companies are guarding their money and investing in only the safest of instruments, such as US Treasury debt, analysts expect the bigger players to put their cash to work later in the year in the form of acquisitions or share buybacks.


Seems the experience of previous downturns and fear that they could need deep reserves to draw on has made technology companies cautious on spending.

Some Silicon Valley veterans point to earlier near-failures, with Intel forced to take an investment from IBM in the 1980s, and Steve Jobs famously accepting a $150m cash infusion from Microsoft after returning to head Apple in 1997.