View this article at: http://www.macnn.com/articles/04/02/18/apple.becomes.debt.free/ Wednesday, Feb 18, 2004 10:15am Apple pays off $300M in debt, becomes debt free As anticipated last month, Apple is now a debt free company, according to a letter from Steve Jobs to company employees: "Today is a historic day of sorts for our company. When I arrived back at Apple in mid-1997, the company was burdened with $1 billion of debt. Through everyone's hard work we turned Apple around, paid off the majority of our debt and began to amass a war chest of cash in the bank which has grown to about $4.8 billion! But there was still $300 million of remaining debt, which we decided to hold to maturity. Today we used $300 million of our cash to pay off this remaining debt. Apple is now a debt-free company – for the first time in over a decade! It sure feels good."