Cisco is the latest big U.S. firm to announce that it will bring its overseas profits home, in order to take advantage of the one-off lower tax rate for repatriated earnings that was included in last year’s tax reform.
The networking equipment company will repatriate $67 billion in earnings, it said, a move that could reward investors to the tune of $44 billion in the form of share buybacks and raised dividends.
The company’s Wednesday earnings release, in which Cisco announced a $25 billion increase in its stock buyback program and a dividend boost of 14%, helped lead to a 6.7% jump in its stock price in after-hours trading.
Other companies to make or predict similar moves include Apple (which said it would pay $38 billion to bring home over $250 billion), Citigroup (which paid $22 billion), Goldman Sachs (which paid $4.4 billion), and Bank of America, American Express and JPMorgan Chase (all paid over $2 billion).
Critics of the tax reform, which also cut corporate tax rates in the U.S., suggested that companies would reward their shareholders rather than investing more money into the American economy with their newly-homebound cash.
Unlike Cisco (CSCO), Apple’s promises last month of its big earnings repatriation came alongside promises of 20,000 new jobs in the U.S. Apple said it would invest $30 billion in capital expenditures in the country over the next five years.