Apple's iPhone X sales woes have been extensively documented in recent days (most recently in "Doubts Grow At Apple" That A $1,000 Smartphone May Not Have Been A Winning Idea"), and with earnings by the world's most valuable company scheduled for tomorrow after the close, many have asked just how Apple will avoid having its stock punished for what has been a disappointing quarter.  Adding fuel to the fire, Daniel Ives, an analyst at GBH Insights in New York, said Wall Street was in "full panic mode" about iPhone figures.

Well, it appears that Tim Cook has come up with a solution: according to The Times, the Apple CEO may unveil a mammoth $400bn cash return to shareholders "in an attempt to ease unrest over weak iPhone sales."

Several analysts have predicted that Cook will hand shareholders $300bn to $400bn through dividends and a share buyback scheme over two to three years.

After resuming dividend payments and instituting a share buyback scheme in 2012, largely at the suggestion of Wall Street, Apple has added between $30BN and $50BN to its shareholder return program at around this time every year according to the FT, and at the current pace, ahead of this week's eagerly anticipated announcement, all those buybacks and dividends will total $300bn by March 2019.

A huge buyback by Apple has been made likely by Donald Trump's tax cuts, which will allow Apple to repatriate its $252bn foreign cash pile without paying a substantial capital gains tax bill; in fact as many companies with a large offshore hoard have shown this earnings season, they have been aggressively using cash to repay investors, none more so than Amgen whose cash shrank by a quarter this quarter to fund buybacks.