At some point Apple is going to find it hard to maintain their iPhone sales. With the flagships moving up in price, it just becomes less worth it to pay that amount. Not to mention the features are becoming less desired, a 30% faster processor, a marginal camera improvement, or Face ID vs Touch ID won’t impact most people enough to justify the cost. Sure I can buy a new iPhone every 2 years but why not save the cash for something that would materially impact my life, like saving.
Not to say iPhone sales are going to drop but the age of high growth is over.
The age of high growth is over for the entire smartphone market. That is why Apple is working on the next few big things now. But right now they have zero incentive to introduce anything revolutionary.
Always a great time to buy when analysts make these ridiculous pronouncements.
THAT is why they do that. Institutional investors need to open a position again, I guess. Since the investor makes a killing when buying low, he pays some schmuck at DigTrendNews to write articles to create FUD. The sheep buy INTO it, the price goes down and the investor just buys. "Anal"-ists do that for the same reason, except they have their own clients who are investors.
Katy still kept target above $200, implicitly meaning she gets Apple no longer a cyclical one trick pony. Better these days to be selling sticky smartphones than diapers and shampoo. Yet those consumer staples firms still get higher multiples. Perceptions take time to change I guess.
Huberty has been very bullish on APPL and it is her job to report the data as she sees fit. As investors it is our job to filter these analysts opinions in much the same way as we filter our rumors on Apple's products and services. APPL stock was at an inflection point earlier this week as it approached its all time high, so one should have expected some volatility - it could have gone either way in my opinion.
As for Apple buying on the dips, I don't believe they can do that (as a public company this could be viewed as stock manipulation). Rather the Board approves a repurchase program (which I expect them to do again on May 1st) that is executed internally on a predetermined time schedule.
I follow the stock very closely and agree with Huberty's assessments of an "in-line" quarter and lower June Qtr guidance. My prediction is that the Board will double their percentage increase in dividend yield (this has averaged about 11% per year so I'm expecting a 20-25% increase on May 1st), and an increase in the ongoing share buy-back program - all funded by the repatriation of offshore funds.
That said I purchased my first APPL shares when they first went public and have been in and out of the stock ever since. I'm long term bullish for APPL and believe that it will win the race to be the first $`1T market cap company in the history of the world. But not all of their products are great and the stock is certainly not going to go straight up. 2018 is a transition year for Apple as the resources dedicated to the new Campus (which is absolutely amazing) and geo-political issues impact Apple's focus on making great products.
There is a strong desire among many analysts to see the familiar narrative become reality: that Apple has reached peak iPhone slash market saturation slash the ceiling of money it can make. I applaud analysts for sticking with this story. Eventually it may become true. Just Earth may become flat some day. Just keep believing, analysts. Keep the faith.
Ms. Huberty is among the few analysts that, IMO, is not a moron. That said, what exactly was the point of guessing at the next quarter's numbers? There's no value to investors, since verification of the claim is at least five months away, but Apple will issue guidance on the next quarter when it reveals its figures for the previous quarter, which I believe is happening on May 1. Wouldn't it be smarter to wait for Apple's guidance (which hasn't ever had to be revised that I can recall, and the actual results almost always fall within the middle of the guidance range), and then speculate on the reasons for said guidance?
It's just ... weird than any analyst would set themselves up for being easily disproven (either low or high) with less than two weeks like this.
i see the annual "shit on apple to drive down the stock before the big announcements" season has begun.
iPhone sales always go way down in the summer because everyone assumes that there's going to be a new phone in the fall and they don't want to 'waste' their money on something that isn't THE BEST
Ms. Huberty is among the few analysts that, IMO, is not a moron. That said, what exactly was the point of guessing at the next quarter's numbers? There's no value to investors, since verification of the claim is at least five months away, but Apple will issue guidance on the next quarter when it reveals its figures for the previous quarter, which I believe is happening on May 1. Wouldn't it be smarter to wait for Apple's guidance (which hasn't ever had to be revised that I can recall, and the actual results almost always fall within the middle of the guidance range), and then speculate on the reasons for said guidance?
It's just ... weird than any analyst would set themselves up for being easily disproven (either low or high) with less than two weeks like this.
It's never disproven high, never... (meaning they said it was higher than what Apple said it was). Which tells you something. If it was just random, it would be scattered around previous guidance, but it's always comically low.
The year the Iphone 6 came along, they all were absurdly off in Q1 and Q2 despite the little dweebs beeing all doom just before the announce was made.
In the days of Scully, there was plenty of stock manipulation behind the scenes too except it wasn't as accelerated by the current news cycle and automated by trading software that can run rings around any broker. The boiler room of analysts and investors went from a little room to an entire planet.
I’m convinced trading bots watch the newsfeeds and execute transactions based on keywords showing up. A big sell-off on false bad news may have less downside risk than being slow to sell on real bad news.
But it gives us little guys a chance to accumulate shares on the dip.
They don't want to update their computers in a timely fashion. They don't want to diversify their hardware business from near total dependency on the iPhone. They're not into any cloud business like most tech companies.
I would not object to more frequent product upgrades in the Mac lineup. As for depending on iPhones, well, I think that misses the point of Apple's product line. Apple makes computers. Lots of kinds of computers. Some go on your desk, some in a backpack, and some are the size of your palm. Many of the smaller ones also make voice calls. The only thing not diversified about the lineup is its sales, which skew heavily toward the small computers than make calls. If that market changes, Apple already has other options, and I suspect is hard at work on others that haven't yet seen the light of day.
Comments
The age of high growth is over for the entire smartphone market. That is why Apple is working on the next few big things now. But right now they have zero incentive to introduce anything revolutionary.
"Anal"-ists do that for the same reason, except they have their own clients who are investors.
It's just ... weird than any analyst would set themselves up for being easily disproven (either low or high) with less than two weeks like this.
iPhone sales always go way down in the summer because everyone assumes that there's going to be a new phone in the fall and they don't want to 'waste' their money on something that isn't THE BEST
But it gives us little guys a chance to accumulate shares on the dip.