NEW YORK — Apple is announcing Monday morning the outcome of its internal discussion concerning its enormous cash balance.

Analysts expect Apple to institute a dividend. It can easily afford one, since it had $97.6 billion in cash and securities at the end of last year.

That would be enough for a $100 one-time dividend for every shareholder, but analysts expect the company to institute a modest, recurring dividend.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer will discuss the decision on a conference call at 6 a.m. PDT, before the markets open, the company said late Sunday.

A dividend would reward shareholders and open ownership of Apple shares to a wider range of funds. Many "value-oriented" funds are not allowed to buy stocks that don't pay dividends.

Analysts say the lack of a dividend or other meaningful way of using the cash has held down Apple's share price.

Oppenheimer told analysts in January that the board was in "active" discussions on ways to use the cash.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, haunted by lean years in the mid-'90s, likely stood in the way of returning cash to shareholders. Jobs died in October.

Partly in anticipation of a dividend, Apple's stock has risen 37 percent since the Jan. 24 conference call with analysts, closing much of the gap between analyst price targets and the actual stock price. Its shares closed Friday at $585.57.

Apple is the world's most valuable publicly traded company, with a market cap of $545 billion.

iPad costs more to make

NEW YORK — Research firm IHS iSuppli, which took apart a new iPad, said it's more expensive to make than the previous version was when it launched a year ago. The tablet's retail price is the same so that means Apple is making less from each sale.

The new iPad went on sale Friday, with a U.S. starting price at $499. iSuppli said a model with 32 gigabytes of RAM and a cellular modem costs $364.35 to manufacture, 9 percent more than the corresponding iPad 2, which cost $335 to make a year ago.