WSJ: Look who's getting Apple, Starbucks stock

Starbucks gives company stock to its baristas. Apple awards shares to its retail workers. Not quite the same thing.

From Apple, Starbucks Have an Answer for the Tight Job Market in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal ($):

U.S. companies are collecting record amounts of cash in their coffers, and many can’t think of anything better to do with it than buy back their stock. Here’s a better idea: Hand out some of those shares to rank-and-file employees.

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Starbucks Corp. has been awarding shares to baristas since the 1990s. The company says it has granted more than $1 billion in equity under its “Bean Stock” program. It currently offers restricted stock vesting over two years to nearly all employees.

Apple Inc. in 2015 initiated a restricted-stock program that includes grants to retail employees. A worker getting $1,000 in Apple stock at that time would have seen the investment grow to more than $1,800 as of this week, including dividends…

Apple earlier this year awarded $2,500 restricted-stock grants to employees following the passage of the Trump administration’s tax cuts. It has also repurchased $200 billion of its stock since 2012, and its board authorized another $100 billion buyback program just before the company released second-quarter results in May.

My take: Giving SBUX only to baristas is like giving AAPL only to the geniuses.