Alphabet’s $118 Billion Cash Pile Poses a New Problem
- Last quarter brought in nearly twice cash spent on buybacks
- Alphabet’s capital return strategy is less defined than peers
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Alphabet Inc. is facing a new and, by most accounts, welcome problem — how to spend its rapidly expanding pile of cash.
The Google owner generated nearly $29 billion in cash in the second quarter after cutting thousands of jobs and efforts to stanch losses in its various moonshot projects. That left Alphabet with cash and short-term marketable securities of about $118 billion, more than any other company in the Nasdaq 100 Stock Index aside from Apple Inc.’s total of about $167 billion.