WS: it's Apple's fault that its actual data does not correspond to my wild guessing.
Actually, Apple admitted that it misjudged iPhone 5C sales. That isn't wall street's miscalculation, it's Apple's miscalculation. It was obvious to me that the 5c was priced too high. I understand that Apple didn't want to lose margin. However, this is the classic big business trap....making too much money, can't pivot. Apple will continue to make boatloads of money but growth of the iPhone is over.
I'm looking to iPad for future growth, but it is much much slower than iPhone. iPad will take over the PC at the same rate the PC declines, which will be really slow.
So if you bought Apple's stock at $550.00 you just lost $50 even though Apple just posted the best sales of their existence. You got f***ed by Wall Street homey!!!! The system on Wall Street sets itself up intentionally in order to short the stock. You are a part owner of Apple and Wall Street just screwed you for $50 dollars even though Apple just popped 15 billion into the bank. Where is the outrage! At the end of the day this is the whorish business model of Wall Street.
They pull numbers etc out of their butts based on nothing but air. Always way too high. Then they diss that the number isn't met when they should be looking at 'yet again Apple's iPhone sales have bested all previous quarters, setting a new record at . . . "
Same thing with the iRing, iWatch, iTV etc. Zero proof that Apple is doing anything other than patenting ideas and building in more support for others to do something and yet the analysts parade out 'productions issues' that will 'delay' these myths.
Actually, Apple admitted that it misjudged iPhone 5C sales. That isn't wall street's miscalculation, it's Apple's miscalculation. It was obvious to me that the 5c was priced too high. I understand that Apple didn't want to lose margin. However, this is the classic big business trap....making too much money, can't pivot. Apple will continue to make boatloads of money but growth of the iPhone is over.
I'm looking to iPad for future growth, but it is much much slower than iPhone. iPad will take over the PC at the same rate the PC declines, which will be really slow.
iPhone growth is over? Sorry you cannot say that with such certainty. On the conference call yesterday Cook mentioned that iPhone sales were up pretty much everywhere but North America.
If a valuation is only supposed to be based on the net profits a company gets each year, then yes, your logic would hold.
In the old days, buying stock was called buying shares. Meaning you bought part of the company as a commitment, because you believed in what they did and wanted to help them finance new investments. That time is sadly long gone. People just care about their own profits now and the company as well as their work is irrelevant as long as the stock prices go up after you've bought your share.
It's a fundamental flaw in the system and one of the main reasons why the financial and economical markets in the world are fluctuating massively, and more so with each passing decade, it seems.
Maybe it's time dividends were forbidden, so that we'd go back to investing instead of speculation.
We just have more solid evidence that the growth story at Apple has come to an end. It doesn't mean Apple makes bad products or that Apple is on the decline. It means it has tapped out its market. Since Apple doesn't care to compete in the low end of the market it can't continue to grow.
"AAPL is down but not out," analyst Brian White proclaimed on Tuesday. He believes Apple must introduce a new product category and initiate a larger stock buyback to appease investors...”
I say don’t appease investors. Let the stock drop like a rock, then use the cash to take the company private. Of course I don’t own any AAPL so...
WS: it's Apple's fault that its actual data does not correspond to my wild guessing.
Actually, Apple admitted that it misjudged iPhone 5C sales. That isn't wall street's miscalculation, it's Apple's miscalculation. It was obvious to me that the 5c was priced too high. I understand that Apple didn't want to lose margin. However, this is the classic big business trap....making too much money, can't pivot. Apple will continue to make boatloads of money but growth of the iPhone is over.
I'm looking to iPad for future growth, but it is much much slower than iPhone. iPad will take over the PC at the same rate the PC declines, which will be really slow.
Their misjudgement was only in the relative numbers of 5s and 5c, since the total came out near the top of Apple's own estimate, so that argument is weak. If the stock were down purely due to the lowered 2014 forecast then that might make sense, but if it is because Apple missed Wall Street's inflated estimates then not so much.
If a valuation is only supposed to be based on the net profits a company gets each year, then yes, your logic would hold.
In the old days, buying stock was called buying shares. Meaning you bought part of the company as a commitment, because you believed in what they did and wanted to help them finance new investments. That time is sadly long gone. People just care about their own profits now and the company as well as their work is irrelevant as long as the stock prices go up after you've bought your share.
It's a fundamental flaw in the system and one of the main reasons why the financial and economical markets in the world are fluctuating massively, and more so with each passing decade, it seems.
Maybe it's time dividends were forbidden, so that we'd go back to investing instead of speculation.
Thank you for saying what I've been saying for a long time. My father-in-law was an old time broker and always bought stock for the long term. He finally retired at age 82 because he couldn't keep up with the new age brokers who bought and sold at lightning speed while collecting very small commissions. As anyone who's followed brokers, they get paid whether a stock goes up or down so they trade constantly to make money. They are the ones messing up the world and it's time the entire stock market gets restructured before the entire world's economy collapses. Of course, someone will always make money when this happens.
Umm, growth was 6.7%, down from mid twenties last year and down from like more than fifty percent the years before that. more importantly it is growing more slowly than the market. So yes, I'm certain the growth story in iPhone is over. Apple makes great phones, but the competition has caught up and people are not motivated by features like fingerprint recognition. Don't get me wrong, owning the most profitable segment of the market is a great thing, but that doesn't change the fact that the growth story is OVER, at least for the iPhone.
We just have more solid evidence that the growth story at Apple has come to an end. It doesn't mean Apple makes bad products or that Apple is on the decline. It means it has tapped out its market. Since Apple doesn't care to compete in the low end of the market it can't continue to grow.
What a bunch of garbage. Apple has never competed in the low end of any product they have ever made. Apple continues to grow anyway. It develops new products it sees fit to market. It doesn't drop a ton of garbage every third Wednesday like others do. Do you realize how many of these low end products end up being sold at throw-away stores a few weeks after they are released? Apple isn't involved in this market because it doesn't have to be. The winner isn't the company that sells the most garbage, it's the one that sells what people keep and return to buy more. Every market can be "tapped" out but Apple has the ability to create new markets and has done so. Wall Street just doesn't understand great new products aren't released every week even when they think they should be. Wall Street is the worst click-bait organization in the world. It needs people to buy and sell stock so it makes money. Plain and simple.
Umm, growth was 6.7%, down from mid twenties last year and down from like more than fifty percent the years before that. more importantly it is growing more slowly than the market. So yes, I'm certain the growth story in iPhone is over. Apple makes great phones, but the competition has caught up and people are not motivated by features like fingerprint recognition. Don't get me wrong, owning the most profitable segment of the market is a great thing, but that doesn't change the fact that the growth story is OVER, at least for the iPhone.
You do realize that numbers can be manipulated by anyone. In the early days of the iPhone it was easy to have 50% growth YoY because there were much fewer iPhones. Now there are millions of iPhones. Growth of 6.7% can easily be the equivalent number of iPhones as 50% was a couple years ago. Apple is selling iPhones but it gets more difficult to sell the same percentage more every year. This is simple math.
I'd hate to be Tim Cook right now. Wall Street wants his head on a platter. I wouldn't be surprised if we start hearing calls for Cook to be replaced. I think it's nonsense but it won't surprise me.
And that doesn't even include the low-end of the retail pyramid. Apple doesn't cater to a big chunk of the market, and they still end up selling 51 million, with barely more than a few models.
Not only does Apple own the money-making end of the market at large, they also sell a boatload of those few, clearly-differentiated (vis-a-vis the competition) models to that market.
Given all that, Apple seems to be the only one playing the game right. The right mix of market-share + profit. Samsung is getting schooled on this at the moment.
iPhone growth is over? Sorry you cannot say that with such certainty. On the conference call yesterday Cook mentioned that iPhone sales were up pretty much everywhere but North America.
Microsoft reported record earnings this month. Would you say MS is growing? If Apple sold even one more phone then lat year they technically grew, but that's not what I consider to be growth. If growth is in the single digits and less than the market, that isn't "growth"
Wall Street didn't have inflated expectations. They had reasonable expectations for growth. Do you really believe Apple had expectations for 6.7% growth? I don't understand how you could think these result are anything but disappointing.
The bottom line painful truth for stockholders and Cook makes this very clear by his actions is that they don't care about the stock. Cook and his executives have already cashed out their options as soon as they vested, holding very few options or none at all. They have made 10's and 100's of millions already. Their goal is to keep the company running. Maybe not growing but running. Great products are their goal. Not great numbers. Good for consumers who want their stuff but for shareholders not so great.
Doing a 100B plus buyback at this price as Icahn says is a no brainer. If you owned apple privately and it was you and one partner. The partner comes to you and says he'll offer you 20% more of his share for 8 times net profit you would be crazy to do it. Furthermore he tells you he'll finance the buyout for you at just 3%! This is how incredibly stupid Cook, Oppenheimer and the entire board are regarding this opportunity.
That said, perhaps they all see something nobody else does? A not very bright future for apple. Maybe they feel this is the heyday and bad times await so they do a token buyback to shut people up right now. What other explanation is there. They seem intelligent enough to not be able to understand how this is in fact a no brainer.
Icahn was almost right about the buyback. His original amount was too low. At 500/share apple should go to the finance community, borrow 250B at 3% (comes to 2% net after they expense the interest out) and buy back half the company. EPS would double to 85/share for 2014. A PE of just 10 which is all anyone will give them gets them to 850 and we'll exclude all cash or debt since no investor gives credit for either (yeah they are that stupid and so are the fund managers...really).
You do realize that numbers can be manipulated by anyone. In the early days of the iPhone it was easy to have 50% growth YoY because there were much fewer iPhones. Now there are millions of iPhones. Growth of 6.7% can easily be the equivalent number of iPhones as 50% was a couple years ago. Apple is selling iPhones but it gets more difficult to sell the same percentage more every year. This is simple math.
So what's your point. You are simply making the case that the Apple naysayers have been making which is that Apple will run into the problem of large numbers. I was hoping Apple would last longer and that it would figure out a way to grow even when it saturated the high end. Their first attempt failed. And they admitted that it failed even by their measures. Where does Apple go from here? What's the plan? Failing on plan 1 is not a good sign.
Comments
I'm looking to iPad for future growth, but it is much much slower than iPhone. iPad will take over the PC at the same rate the PC declines, which will be really slow.
The system on Wall Street sets itself up intentionally in order to short the stock.
You are a part owner of Apple and Wall Street just screwed you for $50 dollars even though Apple just popped 15 billion into the bank.
Where is the outrage! At the end of the day this is the whorish business model of Wall Street.
Same thing with the iRing, iWatch, iTV etc. Zero proof that Apple is doing anything other than patenting ideas and building in more support for others to do something and yet the analysts parade out 'productions issues' that will 'delay' these myths.
"AAPL is down but not out," analyst Brian White proclaimed on Tuesday. He believes Apple must introduce a new product category and initiate a larger stock buyback to appease investors...”
I say don’t appease investors. Let the stock drop like a rock, then use the cash to take the company private. Of course I don’t own any AAPL so...
What a load of rubbish they write....more about attempts to manipulate the stock price / sell a story / goad apple into a new launch?
Apple are flying high no question. Put that in your analysts pipe and smoke it.
WS: it's Apple's fault that its actual data does not correspond to my wild guessing.
Actually, Apple admitted that it misjudged iPhone 5C sales. That isn't wall street's miscalculation, it's Apple's miscalculation. It was obvious to me that the 5c was priced too high. I understand that Apple didn't want to lose margin. However, this is the classic big business trap....making too much money, can't pivot. Apple will continue to make boatloads of money but growth of the iPhone is over.
I'm looking to iPad for future growth, but it is much much slower than iPhone. iPad will take over the PC at the same rate the PC declines, which will be really slow.
Their misjudgement was only in the relative numbers of 5s and 5c, since the total came out near the top of Apple's own estimate, so that argument is weak. If the stock were down purely due to the lowered 2014 forecast then that might make sense, but if it is because Apple missed Wall Street's inflated estimates then not so much.
If a valuation is only supposed to be based on the net profits a company gets each year, then yes, your logic would hold.
In the old days, buying stock was called buying shares. Meaning you bought part of the company as a commitment, because you believed in what they did and wanted to help them finance new investments. That time is sadly long gone. People just care about their own profits now and the company as well as their work is irrelevant as long as the stock prices go up after you've bought your share.
It's a fundamental flaw in the system and one of the main reasons why the financial and economical markets in the world are fluctuating massively, and more so with each passing decade, it seems.
Maybe it's time dividends were forbidden, so that we'd go back to investing instead of speculation.
Thank you for saying what I've been saying for a long time. My father-in-law was an old time broker and always bought stock for the long term. He finally retired at age 82 because he couldn't keep up with the new age brokers who bought and sold at lightning speed while collecting very small commissions. As anyone who's followed brokers, they get paid whether a stock goes up or down so they trade constantly to make money. They are the ones messing up the world and it's time the entire stock market gets restructured before the entire world's economy collapses. Of course, someone will always make money when this happens.
We just have more solid evidence that the growth story at Apple has come to an end. It doesn't mean Apple makes bad products or that Apple is on the decline. It means it has tapped out its market. Since Apple doesn't care to compete in the low end of the market it can't continue to grow.
What a bunch of garbage. Apple has never competed in the low end of any product they have ever made. Apple continues to grow anyway. It develops new products it sees fit to market. It doesn't drop a ton of garbage every third Wednesday like others do. Do you realize how many of these low end products end up being sold at throw-away stores a few weeks after they are released? Apple isn't involved in this market because it doesn't have to be. The winner isn't the company that sells the most garbage, it's the one that sells what people keep and return to buy more. Every market can be "tapped" out but Apple has the ability to create new markets and has done so. Wall Street just doesn't understand great new products aren't released every week even when they think they should be. Wall Street is the worst click-bait organization in the world. It needs people to buy and sell stock so it makes money. Plain and simple.
Umm, growth was 6.7%, down from mid twenties last year and down from like more than fifty percent the years before that. more importantly it is growing more slowly than the market. So yes, I'm certain the growth story in iPhone is over. Apple makes great phones, but the competition has caught up and people are not motivated by features like fingerprint recognition. Don't get me wrong, owning the most profitable segment of the market is a great thing, but that doesn't change the fact that the growth story is OVER, at least for the iPhone.
You do realize that numbers can be manipulated by anyone. In the early days of the iPhone it was easy to have 50% growth YoY because there were much fewer iPhones. Now there are millions of iPhones. Growth of 6.7% can easily be the equivalent number of iPhones as 50% was a couple years ago. Apple is selling iPhones but it gets more difficult to sell the same percentage more every year. This is simple math.
51 million iPhones.
And that doesn't even include the low-end of the retail pyramid. Apple doesn't cater to a big chunk of the market, and they still end up selling 51 million, with barely more than a few models.
Not only does Apple own the money-making end of the market at large, they also sell a boatload of those few, clearly-differentiated (vis-a-vis the competition) models to that market.
Given all that, Apple seems to be the only one playing the game right. The right mix of market-share + profit. Samsung is getting schooled on this at the moment.
Wall Street didn't have inflated expectations. They had reasonable expectations for growth. Do you really believe Apple had expectations for 6.7% growth? I don't understand how you could think these result are anything but disappointing.
growth of the iPhone is over.
Nope.
China.
Microsoft reported record earnings this month.
Yes, but from what?
It's been from all the wrong things vis-a-vis the changing market dynamics for the past several years.
MS can make an obscene amount of money selling rubber dogshit too, but that doesn't quite help their flat-footed mobile strategy.
The bottom line painful truth for stockholders and Cook makes this very clear by his actions is that they don't care about the stock. Cook and his executives have already cashed out their options as soon as they vested, holding very few options or none at all. They have made 10's and 100's of millions already. Their goal is to keep the company running. Maybe not growing but running. Great products are their goal. Not great numbers. Good for consumers who want their stuff but for shareholders not so great.
Doing a 100B plus buyback at this price as Icahn says is a no brainer. If you owned apple privately and it was you and one partner. The partner comes to you and says he'll offer you 20% more of his share for 8 times net profit you would be crazy to do it. Furthermore he tells you he'll finance the buyout for you at just 3%! This is how incredibly stupid Cook, Oppenheimer and the entire board are regarding this opportunity.
That said, perhaps they all see something nobody else does? A not very bright future for apple. Maybe they feel this is the heyday and bad times await so they do a token buyback to shut people up right now. What other explanation is there. They seem intelligent enough to not be able to understand how this is in fact a no brainer.
Icahn was almost right about the buyback. His original amount was too low. At 500/share apple should go to the finance community, borrow 250B at 3% (comes to 2% net after they expense the interest out) and buy back half the company. EPS would double to 85/share for 2014. A PE of just 10 which is all anyone will give them gets them to 850 and we'll exclude all cash or debt since no investor gives credit for either (yeah they are that stupid and so are the fund managers...really).