Dive Brief:
-
The top five non-financial U.S. companies with the most cash for the first time are tech companies, according to a new report.
-
The Moody’s Investors Service report found Apple, Microsoft, Google, Cisco and Oracle together hold $504 billion in cash, which is 30% of all the cash U.S. companies' not in financial services hold.
-
Total cash holdings for the five companies went up 1.8% from 2015.
Dive Insight:
The technology industry represented $777 billion of the total $1.68 trillion in cash held by U.S. companies at the end of 2015, according to Moody’s. Other tech companies that were high on the list include Intel, Facebook and Amazon.
"While the concentration of cash among the top-rated cash holders continues to grow, so too has the portion held by the technology sector, which accounts for a record 46% of total cash in 2015, up from 41% in 2014," said Richard Lane, a Moody’s senior vice president, in a statement.
The report also found that the five tech companies are holding a lot of cash overseas: a total of $1.2 trillion, or 72%, to be exact.
Other industries high on the list for their cash concentrations included energy and healthcare/pharmaceuticals.
