Alphabet is facing a new and, by most accounts, welcome problem –how to spend its rapidly-expanding pile of cash. 

The Google owner generated nearly $29 billion in cash in the second quarter after cutting thousands of jobs and efforts to staunch losses in its various moonshot projects. That left Alphabet with cash and short-term marketable securities of about $118 billion, more than any other company in the Nasdaq 100 Stock Index aside from Apple’s total of about $167 billion. 

However, unlike Apple, which aims to give back most of its cash to shareholders via stock buybacks and dividends, Alphabet has a less clearly-defined capital return strategy, leaving investors seeking more detail on its plans. 

“We haven’t really had to address this issue with Alphabet in the past because they hadn’t been as prolific with generating this kind of cash,” Daniel Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co, said in an interview. His funds own Alphabet shares. 

Generally, investors aren’t fond of companies sitting on large amounts of cash and expect the money to be invested for better returns or given back to shareholders. 

The top three cash generators in the Nasdaq 100 – Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft Corp – brought in a combined $84 billion in the last quarter, the biggest haul for any such non-holiday period in history, according to data compiled by the Bloomberg. 

Alphabet has stepped up buybacks and expanded its repurchase authorisation to $70 billion in April. But last quarter, the firm spent $15 billion on its own shares, barely half of the cash it brought in. 

By contrast, Apple in the last five financial years has returned almost $5 billion more than the record $454 billion in cash it generated.