Icahn is 100 percent right here and I am glad Cook is listening. And for those of you too stupid to notice, there are only three types of people against the buy back 1. The shorts 2. The usual apple bashing media types are all in unison hating the buy back. 3. Those too stupid to understand capital markets and exactly what Icahn is saying.
Now if shorts and Apple badgers hate the buy back, should that not give you a clue if u are a long time investor?
Cook announced share buybacks and dividends, long before Icahn became involved.
Normal course of business for Apple, the gnat Icahn is picking the wrong company to play his little games.
If Cook was surprised by the drop in the share price after he announced flat net revenue year over year for the quarter, and no gross revenue growth for the following quarter even after the China Mobile deal maybe he is a moron. They really should stop supporting the share price when the price is falling and let it bottom out so they can be more efficient with the buybacks.
Comparing Apple to Google right now is pretty ridiculous. Google's net and gross revenue are continuing to increase substantially and investors will pay a premium for that.
You really think the quarter and guidance warranted a 10% drop? Apple is currently valued as if it will have zero growth forever. Who really believes that?
You really think the quarter and guidance warranted a 10% drop? Apple is currently valued as if it will have zero growth forever. Who really believes that?
People buy stocks for the growth and/or income via the dividend. With no immediate prospects for growth, and a dividend that isn't attractive enough to keep investors around for the income (plenty of safer options paying a lot more than 2.4%) a sell off should have been expected. This is how a range bound stock looks.
Do you really think with iPhone and iPad sales growth slowing there was a reason to hold at those levels? I mean for that to make sense you would have to think something was coming that would create a run up in the stock where it would never drop back to those levels again. I certainly don't see anything like that happening in the short term. And if you do I assume you think highly of Cook. Frankly I feel pretty comfortable predicting the next announcements will be end of March/April announcing a 15% dividend increase ($3.50), and adding 25-50 billion to the remaining buyback.
I think that would make it worse. Given that the growth is slowed, then people will buy and sell more to keep their investments growing faster and rely on and even drive the stock fluctuations. To keep it more steady, they'd offer investors more reason to hold onto the stock than to sell it. Stock splits encourage more trading activity that they don't need and lower dividends are an incentive to profit from buying/selling. A reasonable buyback will improve the price (and they are doing it) and a higher dividend will lower the incentive to rock the boat.
Apple is currently valued as if it will have zero growth forever. Who really believes that?
It's not about unit growth but profit. They might address larger markets but they would have to drop margins. Samsung sells double the smartphones Apple does but makes roughly the same or lower profit.
Any new products are unknowns. People can't just believe another revolution is coming because there's no way to evaluate that and not every market is nearly as big as the smartphone/tablet market. A TV could push profits up 10%, wearables 5%. Not huge growth. The key point though is that nobody knows for certain what they'll do next or when. It might be another 3 years before they address a new market.
Um, as an Icahn acolyte that swallows his lack of analysis wholesale, all I can say is that he gets rich off people like you!
And I say, as long as there are sheep waiting to get fleeced, why not. ;-)
I thought it funny that he's assuming anyone who is against Icahn is automatically against capital markets. They USED to be a good thing, and some people making a living off stocks, and even a rarified few will have a retirement based on sound stock investments. But I was in Financial Services and worked with a startup to try and change world trade (I however, was not the economic genius in the group).
Kickstarter probably does more to start real companies than this money game called Wall Street. Apple is better off doing what is best for maintaining profits and forward technologies. Pleasing short term pump and dump pimps like Icahn is the least of their worries. Icahn appears in this case to be jumping in front of a Parade and acting like he lead it somewhere.
Name one company he's hurt. Don't say TWA because all air lines, especially in the 80's were crap. United, Delta, America, they all went bankrupt at one time or another. TWA was crashing with or without Icahn.
That's like saying "Name one person George Zimmerman has killed, and don't say Trayvon because it totally invalidates my point!"
What happened to TWA was far worse than the general airline decline that's been going on since deregulation. Most of the airline bankruptcies in the 80's were small carriers, unless you consider such heavy hitters as Pompano Airways and Emerald to be in the same league.
Comments
Icahn is 100 percent right here and I am glad Cook is listening. And for those of you too stupid to notice, there are only three types of people against the buy back 1. The shorts 2. The usual apple bashing media types are all in unison hating the buy back. 3. Those too stupid to understand capital markets and exactly what Icahn is saying.
Now if shorts and Apple badgers hate the buy back, should that not give you a clue if u are a long time investor?
Cook announced share buybacks and dividends, long before Icahn became involved.
Normal course of business for Apple, the gnat Icahn is picking the wrong company to play his little games.
All the greedy bastards came after that.
You really think the quarter and guidance warranted a 10% drop? Apple is currently valued as if it will have zero growth forever. Who really believes that?
People buy stocks for the growth and/or income via the dividend. With no immediate prospects for growth, and a dividend that isn't attractive enough to keep investors around for the income (plenty of safer options paying a lot more than 2.4%) a sell off should have been expected. This is how a range bound stock looks.
Do you really think with iPhone and iPad sales growth slowing there was a reason to hold at those levels? I mean for that to make sense you would have to think something was coming that would create a run up in the stock where it would never drop back to those levels again. I certainly don't see anything like that happening in the short term. And if you do I assume you think highly of Cook. Frankly I feel pretty comfortable predicting the next announcements will be end of March/April announcing a 15% dividend increase ($3.50), and adding 25-50 billion to the remaining buyback.
I think that would make it worse. Given that the growth is slowed, then people will buy and sell more to keep their investments growing faster and rely on and even drive the stock fluctuations. To keep it more steady, they'd offer investors more reason to hold onto the stock than to sell it. Stock splits encourage more trading activity that they don't need and lower dividends are an incentive to profit from buying/selling. A reasonable buyback will improve the price (and they are doing it) and a higher dividend will lower the incentive to rock the boat.
It's not about unit growth but profit. They might address larger markets but they would have to drop margins. Samsung sells double the smartphones Apple does but makes roughly the same or lower profit.
Any new products are unknowns. People can't just believe another revolution is coming because there's no way to evaluate that and not every market is nearly as big as the smartphone/tablet market. A TV could push profits up 10%, wearables 5%. Not huge growth. The key point though is that nobody knows for certain what they'll do next or when. It might be another 3 years before they address a new market.
Um, as an Icahn acolyte that swallows his lack of analysis wholesale, all I can say is that he gets rich off people like you!
And I say, as long as there are sheep waiting to get fleeced, why not. ;-)
I thought it funny that he's assuming anyone who is against Icahn is automatically against capital markets. They USED to be a good thing, and some people making a living off stocks, and even a rarified few will have a retirement based on sound stock investments. But I was in Financial Services and worked with a startup to try and change world trade (I however, was not the economic genius in the group).
Kickstarter probably does more to start real companies than this money game called Wall Street. Apple is better off doing what is best for maintaining profits and forward technologies. Pleasing short term pump and dump pimps like Icahn is the least of their worries. Icahn appears in this case to be jumping in front of a Parade and acting like he lead it somewhere.
Name one company he's hurt. Don't say TWA because all air lines, especially in the 80's were crap. United, Delta, America, they all went bankrupt at one time or another. TWA was crashing with or without Icahn.
That's like saying "Name one person George Zimmerman has killed, and don't say Trayvon because it totally invalidates my point!"
What happened to TWA was far worse than the general airline decline that's been going on since deregulation. Most of the airline bankruptcies in the 80's were small carriers, unless you consider such heavy hitters as Pompano Airways and Emerald to be in the same league.