Impressive, really — even with the economy in the shape it’s been lately, Apple has been doing so well that they were just able to pull themselves out of debt, according to this internal Apple memo:
Team,
Today is a historic day of sorts for our company. When I arrived back at Apple in mid-1997, the company was burdened with \$1 billion of debt. Through everyone’s hard work we turned Apple around, paid off the majority of our debt and began to amass a war chest of cash in the bank which has grown to about \$4.8 billion! But there was still \$300 million of remaining debt, which we decided to hold to maturity.
Today we used \$300 million of our cash to pay off this remaining debt.
Apple is now a debt-free company — for the first time in over a decade!
It sure feels good.
Steve
(via /.)
iTunes: “The Moon, Part 1” by Speakeasy from the album Common Ground (1995, 3:33).