[By Sudarshana Banerjee]

Do you think Apple is a good buy? Apple believes it is. The company is now buying its own stock, some $10 billion worth of AAPLs over the next three years. And  oh, the company is going to be paying quarterly dividends now, the first time since 1995.

Apple alsoplans 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, says the company. Additionally, Apple’s board 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.

Tim Cook (CEO, Apple): 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. 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.

[Image Courtesy: Apple]