The giant cash balances are held by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), and Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), assuming nothing happens with Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA).  But players like QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM), EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), and eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) are either all sitting with large amounts of cash or will be very soon.

We have broken out these technology, IT, software, and Internet companies by the cash amount they hold or what they have in a soon-to-be cash balance.  Of course only a fraction of this cash will be used for mergers.  But there is also a ton of room here for dividends and of course the share buybacks.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is the #2 on the Real-Time 500 by market cap with close to a $260 billion market cap. It ended the quarter with $36.7 billion in cash and short-term investments, but it also ended with equity and other investments of roughly $6 billion.  We water down the non-cash investments in our analysis to account for dilution and selling pressure, but a one-third off the value would give the software giant some $40 billion.  That could be over $4.00 per share that could be paid out as another huge dividend.  In any deals it makes there is always the concern that antitrust issues will arise, but that has not been the case in the search pact with Yahoo! so far.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) has some $35.4 billion in cash and equivalents.  It also just raised $5 billion in a senior unsecured note offering this week, which effectively offsets the $2.5 billion for the Starent Networks Corp. (NASDAQ: STAR) and the $3.1 billion for the Tandberg deal if that gets resolved and completed.  We are not counting Tandberg because it has had trouble and is considered an at-risk deal, which would give a total figure of about $37.9 billion today.  With a $136 billion market cap, Cisco could pay close to a $6 dividend and start over building its cash if it wanted to.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is the perpetual mystery over what it can or will do with its cash mountain.  The company now sitting with a market cap of $184 billion now that it has a price over $200.00 per share. Buying back its own stock would be expensive and maybe just silly and integrating an outside company into Apple might be far from easy.  It holds close to $34 billion in cash if you include its long-term investments.  Apple could pay out a special of over $37.00 today if it wanted to zero out the cash and start building that all over again.  Or perhaps it could go make a video game platform acquisition.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has a market cap over $180 billion and its new cash balance was listed as $22 billion. It is spending $750 million to acquire AdMob and $105 million to acquire On2 Technologies Inc. (AMEX: ONT).  But these are both stock deals rather than cash and that leaves its cash as is.  We saw that it might be buying stock to do the deal, but that is chump change for the king of search. Google has also noted it is on the prowl and these two small deals won’t stop that.  If Google can’t find a large target, it could pay close to $69.00 per share and just start over on its cash growth game.

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) has a market cap of almost $110 billion and has close to $13 billion in cash equivalents after closing a recent deal. But it has another $4.3+ billion in equity securities and other long-term investments. If we took the same one-third out to water that down, that leaves almost $3 billion there and a grand total of right at $16 billion… Back out the $1.25 billion heading out the door in Q4 for the Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) settlement and you have almost $15 billion.  There are dozens of core related technologies in computing and in communications that it would not fall under harsh antitrust reviews, but anything processor related to PCs would be a tough sell.

Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) is a wild card now as its deal for Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) at $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt, is in jeopardy over the E.U. possible blockage. The company has a $111 billion market cap and it ended its August quarter with some $20.5 billion in cash and marketable securities. Ellison could pay out a special dividend of $4.00 if he wanted to start over at zero again.  He has proven to be a deal-maker and we already know how much he is willing to spend to grow even if a target is not making money.

And what about Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA)?  If that deal is really blocked, it will have to do something other than fire employees.  Sun has ‘bought earnings before’ and its old balance sheet lists close to $3 billion in cash and other equivalents.. we will water that down to $1.5 billion because it needs capital while it keeps losing money.

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) ended with $13.7 billion in gross cash, but that is still over $24.6 billion in cash if you include its long-term investments on the books.  Back out $2.7 billion for 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) and you end up with almost $22 billion in cash.  H-P is probably out of the M&A business until 2010 now.

QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) has a $75 billion market, and its cash and equivalents was $17.7 billion at the end of its fiscal fourth quarter.  That would leave the potential for a $10.00 special dividend if it wants to return capital to holders and then start over building its cash. Or it could look for other intellectual property plays that would give it a 10 to 20 year patent lock.

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is worth almost $35 billion and no longer has the $2.1 billion from the deal to buy Data Domain.  But EMC also still has over 50% of the float of VMware (NYSE: VMW) and that company is worth $16.6 billion that could be counted.  The company said it ended its September quarter with cash and investments of $8.4 billion.  If you assume that VMware could be carved out for half its market value in a very discounted sale, then EMC is sitting on close to $17 billion before tapping any credit lines and before tapping any debt.

International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) has a market cap of $167 billion and now lists roughly $11.5 billion in cash. That is down from the prior quarter after it boiught back shares and retired debt. It is also on notice now that H-P bought 3Com.  Based upon the debt pay down, we’d assume a deal would only come in the form of stock today.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) has a $22.5 billion market cap and may be a wild card because of new management and a Bartz-led reorganization.  It ended its September quarter with cash and equivalents of $4.5 billion.  It also holds over $3 billion in investments in stakes of other companies, so if you water that down by one-third it has access to $6.5 billion.

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) completed its Perot purchase for $3.9 billion, which would leave roughly $8.8 billion in cash and equivalents versus $12.7 billion reported in August.  Add in another $1 billion in cash flow for this quarter just ended on October 31 (results not out yet) and you get an implied $9.8 billion today.  Michael Dell might not want to do another ‘me-too’ deal or transformative merger, but that choice may be one that is by force rather than by desire.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) completed its the Zappos.com buyout, but that was all in stock.  Its market cap is almost $57 billion and it had almost $4 billion in cash and equivalents.  Raising cash would be easy for the company to do after the huge run and with as well as everyone is treating it. It has made some very selective deals over the last year or two and we expect the niche acquisition game to continue.  Bezos was an investment banker before.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) is worth almost $31 billion again, yet it ended last quarter with cash and equivalents of over $4 billion when you include investments.  But… the recent settlement will clear the sale of of the Skype unit of $1.9 billion, plus it will still retain 30% of the entity.  Include the cash flows and eBay is closer to $6 billion in cash.  Just sticking by its model probably won’t be a good message, but what it would buy is more of a question than an answer.

The cash and available amounts listed herein does sometimes differ with what was listed as just the cash and marketable securities.  Our figure includes its long-term investments that can be unlocked and also includes recent cash raises.  We also water the ‘equity investments’ down to give a more conservative picture.  In short, this $265 billion is probably a lot more available than what we are counting.  This is also just the U.S-based list.  With a very weak US Dollar, our companies are looking cheaper and cheaper to foreign buyers.

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: BRCD) is being overly punished this morning with a 12% drop to $8.15 now that 3Com was the merger of choice by H-P.  Brocade may still be a target, yet you never know for sure.  JDS Uniphase Corp. (NASDAQ: JDSU) is up over 10% at $7.99 now that Jim Cramer joined in on what we commented about it being viewed as a possible takeover candidate before.  Stay tuned for a larger expanded list of takeover candidates in technology here.

You can join our open email distribution list which goes out several times per week to be notified of key merger news, key analyst calls, top early morning day trader alerts, along with news of IPO’s, key offerings, guru investor data on Buffett and others, mergers, and more.

JON C. OGG
NOVEMBER 12, 2009

These few tech companies with the $269 billion cash that could be deployed for mergers, acquisitions, or the good old dividends are also listed before tallying up credit lines, factoring, debt sales, and other creative financing methods.  We have listed the suppositions and counting methods for each one to illustrate how much is available at each company.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is still #2 on the Real-Time 500 with close to a $260 billion market cap as of now. It ended the quarter with $36.7 billion in cash and short-term investments, but it also ended with equity (and other) investments of $6 billion.  If you water that down by one-third, then Mister Softy is sitting on $40 billion before any new debt.  That leaves over $4.00 per share that could be paid out today if it just did another huge dividend return and wanted to start over building cash.  In any deals it makes there is always the concern that antitrust issues will arise, but that has not been the case in the search pact with Yahoo! so far.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) ended its October quarter with some $35.4 billion in cash and equivalents.  It also just raised $5 billion in a senior unsecured note offering yesterday, which effectively offsets the $2.5 billion for the Starent Networks Corp. (NASDAQ: STAR) and the $3.1 billion for the Tandberg deal if that gets resolved and completed.  For counting purposes, we are not counting Tandberg because it is thought of as an at-risk deal. That puts a remaining cash balance in the pending file of about $37.9 billion today.  It spent $1.8 billion buying back stock last quarter and a recent boost to its buyback plan leaves about $13.1 billion just to buy back its own stock.  With a $136 billion market cap, Cisco could pay close to $6 billion dividend and start over building its cash if it wanted to.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is now sitting with a market cap of $181 billion now that it has a price over $200.00 per share. Buying back its own stock would be expensive and maybe just silly and integrating an outside company into Apple might be far from easy.  But Apple is now sitting on right at $34 billion in cash if you include its long-term investments.  Apple could pay out a special of over $37.00 today if it wanted to zero out the cash and start building that all over again.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) now has a market cap getting close to $180 billion and a new cash balance of $22 billion.  Google is spending $750 million to acquire AdMob and $105 million to acquire On2 Technologies Inc. (AMEX: ONT).  But these are both stock deals rather than cash and that leaves its cash as is.  Google has also noted it is on the prowl and these two small deals won’t stop that.  If Google could not find a way to deploy cash and chose the cash dividend route, it could pay close to $69.00 per share and just start over on its cash growth game.

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) has a market cap of $108 billion now mid-week and has close to $13 billion in cash equivalents after closing a recent deal. But it has another $4.3+ billion in equity securities and other long-term investments. If we took the same one-third out to water that down, that leaves almost $3 billion there and a grand total of right at $16 billion.  There are dozens of core related technologies in computing and in communications that it would not fall under harsh antitrust reviews, but anything processor related to PCs would be a tough sell.

Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) is tough to evaluate right now because the deal for Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) is valued at $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt.  But this is now a deal in jeopardy and it is hard to know if Larry Ellison will just try to walk away from it. The company has a $109 billion market cap and it ended its August quarter with some $20.5 billion in cash and marketable securities.  In short, Larry Ellison could pay out a special dividend of $4.00 if he wanted to start over at zero and build up his cash from scratch.  But Ellison is a deal-maker, and we now know just how much he is willing to spend to grow even if a target is not making money.

And what about Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA)?  If that deal is really blocked, then this company is going to be in a pickle to find a way to make money.  The company has gone out and bought earnings before, and its old balance sheet lists close to $3 billion in cash and other equivalents.  Because it is a money-losing company, we’ll give this a 50% haircut and give the company some $1.5 billion that it could use in cash.  We’d view any company as highly unlikely to accept Sun Micro shares as buyout collateral unless they were a desperate seller.  So the total added here is $1.5 billion.

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) ended with $13.7 billion in gross cash, but that is still over $24.6 billion in cash if you include its long-term investments on the books.  That is versus a $118 billion market cap.  There is still likely to be a rather long lull before H-P tries to match its big buyout of EDS even if Dell is tip-toeing into IT-services and consulting with Perot.

QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) now has a $74 billion market cap yet it announced last week that cash and equivalents came to $17.7 billion at the end of its fiscal fourth quarter.  QUALCOMM has been settling suits and seems like less of a legal risk than before and it would seem that the company might want to deploy its cash.  It won’t send this back of course, but that would leave the potential for a $10.00 special dividend if it wants to return capital to holders and then start over building its cash.

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) has close to a $35 billion market cap and no longer has the $2.1 billion from the deal to buy Data Domain.  But EMC also still has over 50% of the float of VMware (NYSE: VMW) and that company is worth $16.6 billion that could be counted.  EMC has noted that it could be making deals into the future, and to avoid antitrust issues it would seem that the company could or would make $1 to $3 billion buyouts each year.  The company said it ended its September quarter with cash and investments of $8.4 billion.  If you assume that VMware could be carved out for half its market value in a very discounted sale, then EMC is sitting on close to $17 billion before tapping any credit lines and before tapping any debt.

International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) has a market cap of $166 billion and now lists roughly $11.5 billion in cash.  That is down from the prior quarter after it bought back shares and retired debt. IBM would likely look at another people-intensive or service-intensive deal if it has an appetite to do a cash deal, although there are random hardware and storage and systems possibilities still out there.  Based on the debt pay down, we’d assume a deal would only come in the form of stock today.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) has close to a $23 billion market cap and the distant #2 search player is hard to call a definite buyer now because of new management and a reorganization.  It ended its September quarter with cash and equivalents of $4.5 billion.  It also holds over $3 billion in investments in stakes of other companies, so if you water that down by one-third it has access to $6.5 billion.

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) completing its $3.9 billion Perot Systems Corp.acquisition, which would leave roughly $8.8 billion in cash and equivalents versus $12.7 billion reported in August.  Add in another $1 billion in cash flow for this quarter just ended on October 31 (results not out yet) and you get an implied $9.8 billion today.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is a dark horse here that is probably going to stick to using stock for its acquisitions when it can like it did with the Zappos.com buyout.  Its market cap is now $55 billion and it had almost $4 billion in cash and equivalents.  Raising cash would be easy for the company to do after the huge run and with as well as everyone is treating it.  That could take the cash balance far higher, although some might wonder if Jeff Bezos would use it to invest in rocket ships.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) has a $30 billion market cap, yet it ended last quarter with cash and equivalents of over $4 billion when you include investments.  eBay’s recent settlement will clear the sale of the Skype unit of $1.9 billion, plus it will still retain 30% of the entity.  Include the cash flows and eBay is closer to $6 billion in the green and white paper stuff.  The company probably needs to do something for new growth, yet whether that means buying a public or private operation is an unknown.

The “cash and available” amounts we have listed do sometimes differ with what was listed as just the cash and marketable securities because of recent cash raises or because we have included a watered-down valuation of other investments that could be counted in there if a company really wanted to go do deals.  And of course no company ever wants to “zero out its cash” to pay dividends, but this shows just how much cash is available at each company.

You can join our open email distribution list which goes out several times per week to be notified of key merger news, key analyst calls, top early morning day trader alerts, along with news of IPO’s, key offerings, guru investor data on Buffett and others, mergers, and more.

JON C. OGG
NOVEMBER 10, 2009

Cisco expects the acquisition to be dilutive to non-GAAP earnings in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 and accretive to non-GAAP earnings in fiscal year 2012.

The move may be strategically intelligent because it gets Cisco further into the  smartphone wireless infrastructure business. But, the deal is expensive. Starent only made $15 million on $62 million in revenue last quarter.

We recently noted how all of the tech titans were holding some $260 billion in cash that could be deployed for mergers.  This would hardly put a dent in that figure.

Douglas A. McIntyre

eLoyalty Corporation (NASDAQ: ELOY) rose another 5% to $8.31 today, but this was not above the full 52-week lows after backing off of highs.  The old high was $8.50 and it hit $8.65 today.  Consulting and managed services for behavioral management and integrated contact solutions must be in demand.

Perfect World Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ: PWRD) a hit 52-week high very briefly today at $30.01, topping  the old 52-week high of $30.00.  Shares closed up 3% at $29.83 on the day.  This came on the heels of Citigroup raising its target to $36.00.

Starent Networks, Corp. (NASDAQ: STAR) closed up almost 3% at $23.99 today, above the old 52-week trading range of $7.30 to $23.69. This looks like follow-on buying from yesterday’s KDDI contract in Japan and from last week.  Despite many stocks being way down, this one is up $3.00 from lows over the last 5-day period.

Jon C. Ogg
June 23, 2009

• Analog Devices Inc. (NYSE: ADI)
• Broadcom Corp. (NASDAQ: BRCM)
• Marvell Technology (NASDAQ: MRVL)
• RF Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: RFMD)
• SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK)
• Starent Networks, Corp. (NASDAQ: STAR)
• Skyworks Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: SWKS)
• Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN)

As far as a trade for the move to digital televisions this weekend, Cramer noted that Radio Shack Corp. (NYSE: RSH) is the short-term quick trade for that play into the weekend for a two-point move.  We would make a note of our own here that Radio Shack has been noted by other traders for the same trade already over recent days and its stock has already risen about 5% over the last five trading sessions.  That is at the same time that many tech stocks have fallen off and it has outperformed Best Buy as more of an electronics pure-play stock ahead of the digital conversion.

Jon C. Ogg
June 10, 2009

Alliance Resource (ARLP) Cut to Market Perform at Wachovia.
BJ Services (BJS) Cut to Underweight at JPMorgan.
Checkpoint Software (CHKP) Cut to Hold at Deutsche Bank.
El Paso (EP) Cut to Market Perform at Wachovia.
Forest Oil (FST) Cut to Hold at Jefferies.
Infosys Tech (INFY) Cut to Hold at Societe Generale.
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) Cut to Market Perfoirm at JMP Securities.
Starent Networks (STAR) Cut to Hold at Cantor Fitzgerald.

JON C. OGG

• El Paso Electric (EE) Raised to Hold at Jefferies.
• Liberty Property (LRY) Raised to Hold at Citigroup.
• Newmont Mining (NEM) Raised to Buy at UBS.
• Radisys (RSYS) Raised to Buy at Cantor Fotzgerald.
• Riverbed Tech (RVBD) Raised to Buy at Merriman Curhan.
• Ryanair (RYAAY) Raised to Hold at Deutsche Bank.
• Starent (STAR) Started as Buy at Cantor Fitzgerald.
• UPS (UPS) Raised to Outperform at Morgan Keegan.

Jon C. Ogg
February 4, 2009

Jon C. Ogg
June 6, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Starent is a provider of hardware and software enabling mobile-service operators to delivery multimedia services to subscribers.  It works with video downloads or streaming, Internet access, voice-over-IP, e-mail, mobile TV, video and photo sharing, gaming, and others.  On its site it lists Cantv, SK Telecom, US Cellular, Verizon, Virgin Mobile, Vivo, Zapp, China Unicom, and KDDI as its key customers.

The company had revenues of $94 million and net income was almost $4 million in 2006.  More information can be found at its website at starentnetworks.com.

Jon C. Ogg
June 6, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.