Why are Apple’s shares considered an attractive investment?

They represent a stake in a phenomenally successful company. In terms of impact on the everyday lives of hundreds of millions of people, Apple’s founders and their successors stand alongside Henry Ford and Alexander Graham Bell. The company’s key products have entered the language, whether the Mac computer, the iPhone, the Apple Watch and, of course, iTunes, described as the world’s biggest juke-box. There was even a 2015 film about the company that took its name from co-founder Steve Jobs.

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Good news for consumers, undoubtedly, and good news also for investors. Apple’s recent results, covering the three months to December 31 2016, saw the company’s chief financial officer Luca Maestri announce: ‘We returned nearly $15 billion to investors through share re-purchases and dividends during the quarter.’ The quarterly dividend itself was 57 cents a share, identical to the dividend for the previous three quarters and up on the 52 cents paid for each of the four quarters before that.

Business is brisk at Apple. On January 31, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said of the last three months of 2016: ‘We’re thrilled to report that our holiday quarter results generated Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever, and broke multiple records along the way. We sold more iPhones than ever before and set all-time revenue records for iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch.’