The only way you're make any money on a few points raise in the stock price is if you buying $1M's of shares, it not worth buy 10 or even 100 shares to flip it in hopes to make a few hundreds of $.
I do not believe Icahn tweet had anything to do with the price increase today, it was the market recovering a bit from the mess our governing is causing. If the government shut down for a few days that would be a good things it would save tax payers money. Oh yeah the senators and house rep still get paid even if they are not work.... so much for that
The government shut down doesn't come close to saving money. It added over a billion dollars to the debt(2 billion in today's dollars) the last time republicans tried it.
Wrong. The patents are not worth even close to what your calculation states. Google had the patents valued at $5 Bil, but come to find out they are worth a mere fraction of that. Most of the patents are FRAND and won't have the huge payouts they wanted. For example Motorola was trying to get $4Bil from Microsoft but the court decided on only $2 Mil. LOL.
They bought Motorola at a 63% premium over the share price. LOL.
You bring up the cash in Motorola but what about their liabilities? What about their debt? Why don't you include those? Or what about all the write-offs for severance and other employee expenses? Since aquired Motorola is losing Google about $1B a year.
Bottom line is this: Large acquisitons are much more tricky than returning capital to shareholders.
No, the bottom line is that Google gets a huge tax break every year for 7 years and actually makes money out of the Moto acquisition, even if Moto loses money.
A share buy back is an artificial way to fix an 'undervalued' stock. Once Apple stops buying back stock, it would just fall back to the so-called 'undervalued' level. I view this as a ploy for short term investors to milk Apple of its cash. Of all the investors Apple should be rewarding, the short termers should be the last on their list.
Not really true. Earnings per share go up, P/E goes up, each share becomes a larger piece of the company.
If buybacks don't matter, then dilution of shares wouldn't matter either. But just as no one wants their shares diluted, buybacks are a real and good thing.
The $150B buyback will be an expansion of the existing $60B buyback so it would be over 3 years. In 3 years Apple might generate $150B or more in earnings. So when the buyback is done, they will still have $150B in cash. I think Icahn is saying, don't keep accumulating more than $150B in cash, whatever earnings you have going forward, use it to buy back stock.
Of course it's not worth it if somebody is buying ten shares of AAPL. Ten shares is a total waste of time.
I'm not buying $1 Million in shares, or anything close to that, but I have no complaints about the action today.
Not saying making a few hundred in a day is something to sneeze at, However, I am not into trading daily. If I am not turning at least 30% on a transaction in a period of time it is not work my time pinching multiply $100 profits transaction together. I know everyone has their own strategies, I choose to find the one which make the bigger leaps over time.
Back in the day I make big money on Apples ups and down especially when it woudl swing as much as 10% to 20% in or week. I bought and sold apple more time than any other stock. Today I just hold it since it not worth chasing after the couple of % swings it hits.
BS. Show me the proof. What about the time value of money? Sure they get the deduction but it will take 7 years. You assumption is the patents are worth over $2Bil. LOL. So far they only collected $2Mil from microsoft. Also add the legal fees, severance, re-org fees, ect.
Again they paid 60% more than the stock price to acquire Motorola. You are spreading BS again. Show me how they are making net money not just deductions. The last few quarters Motorola has lost hundreds of billions of dollars.
Q1 2013 - 271 Million loss
Q2 2013 - 342 Million loss
At that rate they will lose an additional $10,000,000,000 in the next 7 years. Sure they won't have to pay taxes but they are LOSING MONEY and CASH FLOW.
You are doing what you always do, change the subject. I never said that Moto wasn't losing money.
All I said was that the initial transaction appeared to be $12.5 billion but when all is tallied up the amount was much less than that.
Is Google losing money? No. Is Moto losing money? Yes.
Hmmmmmm... Sounds like a tax right off for Google against the billions it earns.
Making money with Moto? No. Making more money for Google? Yes. Tax deductions are a wonderful thing.
As much as the investment might not be sound, Google is not losing billions as you ascribe.
As far as the patents go... it's hard to say what the patents are worth. What they are making from Microsoft isn't the value of the patents. How much does Apple make from the Nortel patents? If it's nothing then Apple paid a helluva lot of money for nothing (but I'm not saying that... patents have value regardless of what is being made from them).
Many of you are very ignorant about buybacks. Very ignorant. Fact is Apple has so much money they can't spend it wisely at this point. They already have $150B in cash and they generate $40-$50B a year of free cash flows. By the end of 2016 they will have over $300B. Half of that going to buybacks won't hurt or stop Apple in any way.
Just look at IBM for reference. They have bought back over 40% of their shares and have reward their shareholders. With a $150B buyback Apple can decrease share count by 25%-30%. That's a boost of EPS by the same percentage. Thus all things equal the share price should increase by the same %.
Sorry hording the $300B is not an option. They would either have to return cash to shareholders or make aquisitions. Large aquisitions rarely work. Look at Google buying Motorola Mobile. Looks nice on paper but they are losing almost a BILLION dollars a year on that 'investment'. They bought Motorola for $13B and I'm almost 100% sure they won't recoup any of that money. When all is said and done they may lose $20B.
I may not be running a billion dollar company but I prefer to have cash rather than nothing and debts.
Apple don't make acquisition until it has something to do with their products unlike Amazon which acquire companies to add to its revenue stream.
I prefer Apple to keep its cash and use it like to buy a fab make their own chips.
One more thing how is IBM doing now and I don't think it is anything sterling and may go the way of Dell if they are not careful.
Moto losing money IS Google losing money. They are a one and the same. If Moto loses $1.2 Billion a year (the rate they are going so far) then Google is losing at least $600Mil after taxes.
Fact is Google is losing BILLIONS. Just wait until they have to write down the value of their patents. So far they only got 2 million and most of their patents are FRAND so don't expect much.
Where are you getting the "most of their patents are FRAND" claim? You've said it several times so far. Sounds like it might be made up unless you or someone else has done a count. :???:
Perhaps you think the value should be written down because Google hasn't chosen to sue anyone with them? The fact that Google has them now rather than a company with a track record of suing competitors should be worth a couple billion IMO.
You can. For American stock, the options contract is usually for 100 underlying shares. However there are exceptions like "mini" contracts for AAPL which only started trading earlier this year, for 10 underlying shares.
In the specific example for BIDU, take a look at this:
Take a look at the $180 strike price. For calls the bid was $0.30, the ask was $0.35. So let's just take the mid-point and say it's $0.33. We have to multiply that by 100 since we are dealing with 100 underlying shares. That means the price for that call option contract for BIDU at a strike price of $180, expiring on Oct 19, is $33. This does not include commissions and fees.
$12.5 billion was the purchase price. Where did you get $4 Bil?
Juse search on google with "Google Motorola purchase breakdown" and you will see articles from everywhere (Forbes, WSJ, Business insider etc)
Motorola Mobility had $2.9B Cash at the time of google purchase with zero deficit.
That brings cost down to 9.6B$
They sold Cable business for $2.35B, that brings cost down to : $7.25B
They sold their entire China, Brazil and India Phone manufacturing facility to Flextronics for undisclosed amount.
Then there is Tax allowance.
Below is from Forbes
“The tax benefits of the deal make what was a good deal into a great deal,” said Robert Willens, a New York accounting and tax expert. He estimated that through the acquisition, Google can expect to reap $700m a year in tax deductions from future profits each year through 2019. Google also will be able to immediately reduce its taxes by $1bn due to Motorola Mobility’s US net operating loss, and by a further $700m due to its foreign operating loss, he said."
Add all those up and cost can be as lows as less then $1B.
Moto losing money IS Google losing money. They are a one and the same. If Moto loses $1.2 Billion a year (the rate they are going so far) then Google is losing at least $600Mil after taxes.
Fact is Google is losing BILLIONS. Just wait until they have to write down the value of their patents. So far they only got 2 million and most of their patents are FRAND so don't expect much.
Where did you got $1.2B loss for Motorola. Did you even checked google results to see that or just guessing?
Below is official loss history from Google Results. Look yourself before putting junk numbers.
Also don't underestimate the profits they are making each quarter.
If you check results in detail you will see something like this.
You will see below line for each quarters results to tell that they profit $700 million/year for past Motorola losses as tax benefits.
"the expense related to SBC and the related tax benefits were $778 million and $167 million compared to $561 million and $134 million in the second quarter of 2012"
loss for Motorola in the second quarter of 2012 was $38 million
loss for Motorola in the third quarter of 2012 was $151 million
loss for Motorola Mobile in the fourth quarter of 2012 was $152 million
loss for Motorola Mobile in the first quarter of 2013 was $179 million
loss for Motorola Mobile in the second quarter of 2013 was $218 million
The idea is not that they use their enormous cash hoard, but that they borrow the money. Buying the stock would cause it to rise to it's proper value, and since Apple would own more stock they would benefit. Apple's cost of borrowing would be low, and the interest payments are a pre-tax expense which would lower their overall tax burden; and their net dividend payouts would also be reduced.
It's not a terrible idea.
I’ll accept that as long as it can be agreed that it’s not remotely a good idea, either.
“Hmm… I have the money to buy a second house outright. I know! I’ll borrow that money instead and willingly pay interest when I don’t need to! Say, come to think of it, I don’t need to buy a second house in the first place, since that would only do me damage rather than continuing to make money hand over fist my usual way…”
But what value are they giving the patents in that calculation? Even with a $2B tax reduction we are still talking over $5B for a trash company that's losing over $1B a year.
And don't forget about the cost of the transactions. Lawyer fees, severance costs, employee costs, ect. Those are NOT cheap. My whole argument was that buying companies is not as easy as it seems. And in the case of Google they are actually LOSING money.
Did you see the article or read it in details?
It is $6.6B Tax reducetion, not $2B.
It is $1.7B immediate Tax realization and $700m Each year until year 2019.
Where do you see cost of transactions, lawyer fees, severance costs appear. That is the difference between GAAP earning and non GAAP earning. That's why GAAP earning are called one time expense.
As said before and still saying that they are not making loss yet. They have profited so far from the deal or got the patents for dirt cheap.
Count all earnings Google made and then see how much Google paid for Motorola rather then keen saying blindly they paid $12.5B.
2013 Q2 - GAAP operating loss for Motorola Mobile was $342 million
The numbers you are giving is non-GAAP bullshit numbers. Here is Google's quote for the numbers you are referring to:
"We use these non-GAAP financial measures for financial and operational decision-making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. Our management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide meaningful supplemental information regarding our performance and liquidity by excluding certain expenses and expenditures that may not be indicative of our recurring core business"
Another case of Google FLAW-GIC. So they choose to exclude certain expenses? What total stupidity.
And in the future please don't call someone out before you know all THE FACTS. Tell me I'm an idiot and guessing and pulling numbers out of my ass? Learn to read earnings reports before you call me an idiot.
I don't care how many tax deductions you are getting. If you are losing $1.2 Bil a year (based on the last 2 quarters) you made a stupid purchase. Notice how the losses are GROWING each Quarter? We may be at $500Mil lost in Q3.
Do you even know the difference between GAAP earning and non-GAAP earning? Why don't you check the difference in Apple results first?
They are called one time expenses and doesn't go forever. When google purchase Motorola, They had close to 23000 employees now they have less than 5000 employees, Where does that severance cost counted? That goes to GAAP.
Now with less than 5000 employees, how much employee cost left and how much more severance left to pay?
Why the GAAP went up, because there were transactions that got closed to sell few devisions, reduce employees.
Also Google leased $500m facility to move Motorola campus to downtown. All those cost goes to GAAP and doesn't get repeated.
Now stop your BS saying that you don't understand all this or if you really don't understand this, then you don't even deserve my response.
I'm not too well versed in the options game, but can you buy as little as one call option for $38 (for BIDU as you mentioned)?
I thought that options were sold in lots of something like 50 or 100?
Late reply, but yes that option was available for $0.38 per share at lot of 100. It was this cheap because of a high risk call, which worked out better than expected.
Comments
The government shut down doesn't come close to saving money. It added over a billion dollars to the debt(2 billion in today's dollars) the last time republicans tried it.
Of all the investors Apple should be rewarding, the short termers should be the last on their list.
!
Wrong. The patents are not worth even close to what your calculation states. Google had the patents valued at $5 Bil, but come to find out they are worth a mere fraction of that. Most of the patents are FRAND and won't have the huge payouts they wanted. For example Motorola was trying to get $4Bil from Microsoft but the court decided on only $2 Mil. LOL.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/25/4267830/judge-rules-motorolas-patents-arent-worth-the-4-billion-a-year-it-wanted-from-microsoft
They bought Motorola at a 63% premium over the share price. LOL.
You bring up the cash in Motorola but what about their liabilities? What about their debt? Why don't you include those? Or what about all the write-offs for severance and other employee expenses? Since aquired Motorola is losing Google about $1B a year.
Bottom line is this: Large acquisitons are much more tricky than returning capital to shareholders.
No, the bottom line is that Google gets a huge tax break every year for 7 years and actually makes money out of the Moto acquisition, even if Moto loses money.
A share buy back is an artificial way to fix an 'undervalued' stock. Once Apple stops buying back stock, it would just fall back to the so-called 'undervalued' level. I view this as a ploy for short term investors to milk Apple of its cash. Of all the investors Apple should be rewarding, the short termers should be the last on their list.
Not really true. Earnings per share go up, P/E goes up, each share becomes a larger piece of the company.
If buybacks don't matter, then dilution of shares wouldn't matter either. But just as no one wants their shares diluted, buybacks are a real and good thing.
The $150B buyback will be an expansion of the existing $60B buyback so it would be over 3 years. In 3 years Apple might generate $150B or more in earnings. So when the buyback is done, they will still have $150B in cash. I think Icahn is saying, don't keep accumulating more than $150B in cash, whatever earnings you have going forward, use it to buy back stock.
Of course it's not worth it if somebody is buying ten shares of AAPL. Ten shares is a total waste of time.
I'm not buying $1 Million in shares, or anything close to that, but I have no complaints about the action today.
Not saying making a few hundred in a day is something to sneeze at, However, I am not into trading daily. If I am not turning at least 30% on a transaction in a period of time it is not work my time pinching multiply $100 profits transaction together. I know everyone has their own strategies, I choose to find the one which make the bigger leaps over time.
Back in the day I make big money on Apples ups and down especially when it woudl swing as much as 10% to 20% in or week. I bought and sold apple more time than any other stock. Today I just hold it since it not worth chasing after the couple of % swings it hits.
BS. Show me the proof. What about the time value of money? Sure they get the deduction but it will take 7 years. You assumption is the patents are worth over $2Bil. LOL. So far they only collected $2Mil from microsoft. Also add the legal fees, severance, re-org fees, ect.
Again they paid 60% more than the stock price to acquire Motorola. You are spreading BS again. Show me how they are making net money not just deductions. The last few quarters Motorola has lost hundreds of billions of dollars.
Q1 2013 - 271 Million loss
Q2 2013 - 342 Million loss
At that rate they will lose an additional $10,000,000,000 in the next 7 years. Sure they won't have to pay taxes but they are LOSING MONEY and CASH FLOW.
You are doing what you always do, change the subject. I never said that Moto wasn't losing money.
All I said was that the initial transaction appeared to be $12.5 billion but when all is tallied up the amount was much less than that.
Is Google losing money? No. Is Moto losing money? Yes.
Hmmmmmm... Sounds like a tax right off for Google against the billions it earns.
Making money with Moto? No. Making more money for Google? Yes. Tax deductions are a wonderful thing.
As much as the investment might not be sound, Google is not losing billions as you ascribe.
As far as the patents go... it's hard to say what the patents are worth. What they are making from Microsoft isn't the value of the patents. How much does Apple make from the Nortel patents? If it's nothing then Apple paid a helluva lot of money for nothing (but I'm not saying that... patents have value regardless of what is being made from them).
I may not be running a billion dollar company but I prefer to have cash rather than nothing and debts.
Apple don't make acquisition until it has something to do with their products unlike Amazon which acquire companies to add to its revenue stream.
I prefer Apple to keep its cash and use it like to buy a fab make their own chips.
One more thing how is IBM doing now and I don't think it is anything sterling and may go the way of Dell if they are not careful.
Where are you getting the "most of their patents are FRAND" claim? You've said it several times so far. Sounds like it might be made up unless you or someone else has done a count. :???:
Perhaps you think the value should be written down because Google hasn't chosen to sue anyone with them? The fact that Google has them now rather than a company with a track record of suing competitors should be worth a couple billion IMO.
You can. For American stock, the options contract is usually for 100 underlying shares. However there are exceptions like "mini" contracts for AAPL which only started trading earlier this year, for 10 underlying shares.
In the specific example for BIDU, take a look at this:
http://www.google.com/finance/option_chain?q=NASDAQ:BIDU&ei=Dm1LUuC-NIW0kgWAOg
Change the expiry date to Oct 19.
Take a look at the $180 strike price. For calls the bid was $0.30, the ask was $0.35. So let's just take the mid-point and say it's $0.33. We have to multiply that by 100 since we are dealing with 100 underlying shares. That means the price for that call option contract for BIDU at a strike price of $180, expiring on Oct 19, is $33. This does not include commissions and fees.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/22/technology/google-motorola/index.htm
$12.5 billion was the purchase price. Where did you get $4 Bil?
Juse search on google with "Google Motorola purchase breakdown" and you will see articles from everywhere (Forbes, WSJ, Business insider etc)
Motorola Mobility had $2.9B Cash at the time of google purchase with zero deficit.
That brings cost down to 9.6B$
They sold Cable business for $2.35B, that brings cost down to : $7.25B
They sold their entire China, Brazil and India Phone manufacturing facility to Flextronics for undisclosed amount.
Then there is Tax allowance.
Below is from Forbes
“The tax benefits of the deal make what was a good deal into a great deal,” said Robert Willens, a New York accounting and tax expert. He estimated that through the acquisition, Google can expect to reap $700m a year in tax deductions from future profits each year through 2019. Google also will be able to immediately reduce its taxes by $1bn due to Motorola Mobility’s US net operating loss, and by a further $700m due to its foreign operating loss, he said."
Add all those up and cost can be as lows as less then $1B.
Moto losing money IS Google losing money. They are a one and the same. If Moto loses $1.2 Billion a year (the rate they are going so far) then Google is losing at least $600Mil after taxes.
Fact is Google is losing BILLIONS. Just wait until they have to write down the value of their patents. So far they only got 2 million and most of their patents are FRAND so don't expect much.
Where did you got $1.2B loss for Motorola. Did you even checked google results to see that or just guessing?
Below is official loss history from Google Results. Look yourself before putting junk numbers.
Also don't underestimate the profits they are making each quarter.
If you check results in detail you will see something like this.
You will see below line for each quarters results to tell that they profit $700 million/year for past Motorola losses as tax benefits.
"the expense related to SBC and the related tax benefits were $778 million and $167 million compared to $561 million and $134 million in the second quarter of 2012"
loss for Motorola in the second quarter of 2012 was $38 million
loss for Motorola in the third quarter of 2012 was $151 million
loss for Motorola Mobile in the fourth quarter of 2012 was $152 million
loss for Motorola Mobile in the first quarter of 2013 was $179 million
loss for Motorola Mobile in the second quarter of 2013 was $218 million
It's not a terrible idea.
I’ll accept that as long as it can be agreed that it’s not remotely a good idea, either.
“Hmm… I have the money to buy a second house outright. I know! I’ll borrow that money instead and willingly pay interest when I don’t need to! Say, come to think of it, I don’t need to buy a second house in the first place, since that would only do me damage rather than continuing to make money hand over fist my usual way…”
But what value are they giving the patents in that calculation? Even with a $2B tax reduction we are still talking over $5B for a trash company that's losing over $1B a year.
And don't forget about the cost of the transactions. Lawyer fees, severance costs, employee costs, ect. Those are NOT cheap. My whole argument was that buying companies is not as easy as it seems. And in the case of Google they are actually LOSING money.
Did you see the article or read it in details?
It is $6.6B Tax reducetion, not $2B.
It is $1.7B immediate Tax realization and $700m Each year until year 2019.
Where do you see cost of transactions, lawyer fees, severance costs appear. That is the difference between GAAP earning and non GAAP earning. That's why GAAP earning are called one time expense.
As said before and still saying that they are not making loss yet. They have profited so far from the deal or got the patents for dirt cheap.
Count all earnings Google made and then see how much Google paid for Motorola rather then keen saying blindly they paid $12.5B.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/07/20/google-keeps-bleeding-through-motorola.aspx
"Google closed the acquisition in Q2 2012, and Motorola's cumulative operating losses since then now stand at $1.73 billion."
http://investor.google.com/earnings/2013/Q1_google_earnings.html
2013 Q1 - GAAP operating loss for Motorola Mobile was $271 million,
http://investor.google.com/earnings/2013/Q2_google_earnings.html
2013 Q2 - GAAP operating loss for Motorola Mobile was $342 million
The numbers you are giving is non-GAAP bullshit numbers. Here is Google's quote for the numbers you are referring to:
"We use these non-GAAP financial measures for financial and operational decision-making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. Our management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide meaningful supplemental information regarding our performance and liquidity by excluding certain expenses and expenditures that may not be indicative of our recurring core business"
Another case of Google FLAW-GIC. So they choose to exclude certain expenses? What total stupidity.
And in the future please don't call someone out before you know all THE FACTS. Tell me I'm an idiot and guessing and pulling numbers out of my ass? Learn to read earnings reports before you call me an idiot.
I don't care how many tax deductions you are getting. If you are losing $1.2 Bil a year (based on the last 2 quarters) you made a stupid purchase. Notice how the losses are GROWING each Quarter? We may be at $500Mil lost in Q3.
Do you even know the difference between GAAP earning and non-GAAP earning? Why don't you check the difference in Apple results first?
They are called one time expenses and doesn't go forever. When google purchase Motorola, They had close to 23000 employees now they have less than 5000 employees, Where does that severance cost counted? That goes to GAAP.
Now with less than 5000 employees, how much employee cost left and how much more severance left to pay?
Why the GAAP went up, because there were transactions that got closed to sell few devisions, reduce employees.
Also Google leased $500m facility to move Motorola campus to downtown. All those cost goes to GAAP and doesn't get repeated.
Now stop your BS saying that you don't understand all this or if you really don't understand this, then you don't even deserve my response.
Keep shouting your FUD.
I'm not too well versed in the options game, but can you buy as little as one call option for $38 (for BIDU as you mentioned)?
I thought that options were sold in lots of something like 50 or 100?
Late reply, but yes that option was available for $0.38 per share at lot of 100. It was this cheap because of a high risk call, which worked out better than expected.