Most of us on this site are probably pretty happy... with Apple and with Tim Cook.
Not Avon b7 or gatorguy. Avon b7 will be in shortly to explain to us why Huawei is superior to Apple in every metric. Gatorguy will be by to explain why Google is in a better position than Apple. You can count on it like death and taxes.
Give me those metrics and let's see if I was right!
Ball's in your court.
Let's see if what I said matches what you think I said.
Just today, Canalys has stated that Huawei...
I stopped reading there. you just HAD to prove his point didn't ya?
Most of us on this site are probably pretty happy... with Apple and with Tim Cook.
Not Avon b7 or gatorguy. Avon b7 will be in shortly to explain to us why Huawei is superior to Apple in every metric. Gatorguy will be by to explain why Google is in a better position than Apple. You can count on it like death and taxes.
LOL... If I did it would be a first for me. I've never believed Google to be in a better position than Apple and 100% certain I've not claimed it since it's not true. I wish you were as careful with the truth so you wouldn't write such silliness so often.
Some of the stuff you come up with...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but were you the guy who said Google had "unlimited growth" potential because of online ads? Nothing is unlimited. Someone can invent the next iPhone and put Apple out of business.
Just today it was announced that Google revenue was down for the first time in it's history because of lost ad revenue.
Sara Fischer(?) made an interesting observation regarding Facebook’s relative success in ad revenue when compared To Google:
Facebook ads are weighted more towards products.
Google ads are weighed more towards … (dramatic pause) … travel.
Part of the problem is that Google’s algorithms are seasonal m and they didn’t adjust them to account for travel bans during the holiday season.
Most of us on this site are probably pretty happy... with Apple and with Tim Cook.
Not Avon b7 or gatorguy. Avon b7 will be in shortly to explain to us why Huawei is superior to Apple in every metric. Gatorguy will be by to explain why Google is in a better position than Apple. You can count on it like death and taxes.
Give me those metrics and let's see if I was right!
Ball's in your court.
Let's see if what I said matches what you think I said.
Just today, Canalys has stated that Huawei has claimed the top spot worldwide in handset sales in spite of the pandemic, not having access to one of the world's largest handset markets and with the U.S government literally trying to destroy the company. For context, this is the first time in nine years that Samsung or Apple hasn't held the position.
I said for years that the eventual 'SE' move was much needed and applauded it when it finally happened.
I said the model spread had to widen and Apple did that.
I said pricing needed to be adjusted and Apple did that too.
I said it needed catch up with top Android flagships in many areas. It is (slowly) doing that.
5G was the last big issue (and 100% thanks to QC) we know that is coming.
And the relevant point in these earnings is that iPhone revenues remain pretty much flat - again !
But if you actually bothered to read what I said, about this quarter (and the last one), you would see how wrong you are, but instead of regurgitating what I've already gone on record as saying myself, why not do some actual work yourself (but quoting me) and tell me if what you have just claimed actually holds up to scrutiny?
Lots of people like patting themselves on the back for stating the obvious, but what they often fail to mention is the circumstances surrounding the back-patting.
Everyone, and I mean literally everyone knew that the Apple couldn't rely on the high-end forever. In fact everyone, and I mean literally everyone, knew that they couldn't rely on phones forever, full stop.
The problem isn't that you were predicting the obvious; the problem is that you were calling for Apple to do the obvious at a time when they were still making bags of cash on the high end. The trick is not if, it's when. Apple was always going to do this, but doing it when you said they should do it would have cost them billions in revenue.
The other thing that all your 'I said' statements fail to address Apple's long term goal, which is certainly wasn't to join the Android OEMs in a race to the bottom. The point you've missed is the why. They're not making cheap phones because they're trying to compete in the cheap phones market. They're making devices more accessible so that more people have access to their services platform.
This is why Apple is spending billions on research into recycling devices. This is why Apple is pushing folk towards subscribing to their devices and returning them to Apple when they upgrade This is why they're building out services and education and after care.
Just today, Canalys has stated that Huawei has claimed the top spot worldwide in handset sales in spite of the pandemic, not having access to one of the world's largest handset markets and with the U.S government literally trying to destroy the company. For context, this is the first time in nine years that Samsung or Apple hasn't held the position.
Yeah, this would be a lot more impressive if they weren't the favoured company in the actual largest handset market and weren't being supported by a government that browbeats American competition while turning a blind eye to wholesale IP theft.
And being "one of the world's largest handset markets" bears little weight when the market in question is in the grips of a pandemic and its worst economic contraction on record. So I'm not sure if congratulations should go to Huawei, or to the Chinese government for getting a handle on the pandemic so quickly, and even then, I think it would be something of a slow clap of congratulations, since the virus did originate there, and so they had something of a head start on the rest of the planet, especially since they chose to keep live-saving information from the rest of the world.
If the Chinese government sought to share the information on the virus when they became aware of it, instead of trying to suppress it, then tens of thousands of lives worldwide could have been saved, as well as millions of jobs and several economies), which is why crowing about Huawei being the top selling handset is a bit strange considering the cowardly actions of the government supporting played no small part in getting them there.
Most of us on this site are probably pretty happy... with Apple and with Tim Cook.
Not Avon b7 or gatorguy. Avon b7 will be in shortly to explain to us why Huawei is superior to Apple in every metric. Gatorguy will be by to explain why Google is in a better position than Apple. You can count on it like death and taxes.
Give me those metrics and let's see if I was right!
Ball's in your court.
Let's see if what I said matches what you think I said.
Just today, Canalys has stated that Huawei has claimed the top spot worldwide in handset sales in spite of the pandemic, not having access to one of the world's largest handset markets and with the U.S government literally trying to destroy the company. For context, this is the first time in nine years that Samsung or Apple hasn't held the position.
I said for years that the eventual 'SE' move was much needed and applauded it when it finally happened.
I said the model spread had to widen and Apple did that.
I said pricing needed to be adjusted and Apple did that too.
I said it needed catch up with top Android flagships in many areas. It is (slowly) doing that.
5G was the last big issue (and 100% thanks to QC) we know that is coming.
And the relevant point in these earnings is that iPhone revenues remain pretty much flat - again !
But if you actually bothered to read what I said, about this quarter (and the last one), you would see how wrong you are, but instead of regurgitating what I've already gone on record as saying myself, why not do some actual work yourself (but quoting me) and tell me if what you have just claimed actually holds up to scrutiny?
So? Why aren't you a top Wall St broker then? After all, you have so much insight into how APPL should perform and what products they should release... why aren't you making gazillions from this deep knowledge?
As for iPhone revenues being flat... At this point in the product cycle that is a pretty good thing. Also, you can't keep on increasing market share/revenue/profit. I seem to recall a US Insurance Company in the 1980's kept on doing that until... it was found that apparently their market cap was more that possible. The bubble burst and, well you can guess the rest.
Phones are a mature market. Keeping your market share in key countries is where it is important. Other sectors are growing which is good.
I don't hold any APPL stock so I really don't have any axe to grind either way.
Most of us on this site are probably pretty happy... with Apple and with Tim Cook.
Not Avon b7 or gatorguy. Avon b7 will be in shortly to explain to us why Huawei is superior to Apple in every metric. Gatorguy will be by to explain why Google is in a better position than Apple. You can count on it like death and taxes.
Give me those metrics and let's see if I was right!
Ball's in your court.
Let's see if what I said matches what you think I said.
Just today, Canalys has stated that Huawei has claimed the top spot worldwide in handset sales in spite of the pandemic, not having access to one of the world's largest handset markets and with the U.S government literally trying to destroy the company. For context, this is the first time in nine years that Samsung or Apple hasn't held the position.
I said for years that the eventual 'SE' move was much needed and applauded it when it finally happened.
I said the model spread had to widen and Apple did that.
I said pricing needed to be adjusted and Apple did that too.
I said it needed catch up with top Android flagships in many areas. It is (slowly) doing that.
5G was the last big issue (and 100% thanks to QC) we know that is coming.
And the relevant point in these earnings is that iPhone revenues remain pretty much flat - again !
But if you actually bothered to read what I said, about this quarter (and the last one), you would see how wrong you are, but instead of regurgitating what I've already gone on record as saying myself, why not do some actual work yourself (but quoting me) and tell me if what you have just claimed actually holds up to scrutiny?
So? Why aren't you a top Wall St broker then? After all, you have so much insight into how APPL should perform and what products they should release... why aren't you making gazillions from this deep knowledge?
Because real brokers trade on being in the right place at the right time; not being at the right place too early or too late.
They certainly don't make money by stating what everyone else already knows.
As for iPhone revenues being flat... At this point in the product cycle that is a pretty good thing. Also, you can't keep on increasing market share/revenue/profit. I seem to recall a US Insurance Company in the 1980's kept on doing that until... it was found that apparently their market cap was more that possible. The bubble burst and, well you can guess the rest.
Well, most analysts expected the iPhone sales to drop off a cliff, so …
The thing is that @AvonB7 is bragging about saying Apple should be making cheaper phones, when Apple was already planning on how to move to a service model, sidestepping the phone as its most important revenue generator.
Some observers noted that Cook was almost apologising for printing money during a pandemic.
He's no doubt acutely aware that being too successful attracts the wrong kind of attention
U.S. culture. They hate seeing their own people rise. Congress seems to wanna take Apple down and replace them with Chinese knockoffs like Huawei or OnePlus. Companies that have ZERO innovation and would stagnate the industry without Apple's inventions.
Most of us on this site are probably pretty happy... with Apple and with Tim Cook.
Not Avon b7 or gatorguy. Avon b7 will be in shortly to explain to us why Huawei is superior to Apple in every metric. Gatorguy will be by to explain why Google is in a better position than Apple. You can count on it like death and taxes.
Give me those metrics and let's see if I was right!
Ball's in your court.
Let's see if what I said matches what you think I said.
Just today, Canalys has stated that Huawei has claimed the top spot worldwide in handset sales in spite of the pandemic, not having access to one of the world's largest handset markets and with the U.S government literally trying to destroy the company. For context, this is the first time in nine years that Samsung or Apple hasn't held the position.
I said for years that the eventual 'SE' move was much needed and applauded it when it finally happened.
I said the model spread had to widen and Apple did that.
I said pricing needed to be adjusted and Apple did that too.
I said it needed catch up with top Android flagships in many areas. It is (slowly) doing that.
5G was the last big issue (and 100% thanks to QC) we know that is coming.
And the relevant point in these earnings is that iPhone revenues remain pretty much flat - again !
But if you actually bothered to read what I said, about this quarter (and the last one), you would see how wrong you are, but instead of regurgitating what I've already gone on record as saying myself, why not do some actual work yourself (but quoting me) and tell me if what you have just claimed actually holds up to scrutiny?
Lots of people like patting themselves on the back for stating the obvious, but what they often fail to mention is the circumstances surrounding the back-patting.
Everyone, and I mean literally everyone knew that the Apple couldn't rely on the high-end forever. In fact everyone, and I mean literally everyone, knew that they couldn't rely on phones forever, full stop.
The problem isn't that you were predicting the obvious; the problem is that you were calling for Apple to do the obvious at a time when they were still making bags of cash on the high end. The trick is not if, it's when. Apple was always going to do this, but doing it when you said they should do it would have cost them billions in revenue.
The other thing that all your 'I said' statements fail to address Apple's long term goal, which is certainly wasn't to join the Android OEMs in a race to the bottom. The point you've missed is the why. They're not making cheap phones because they're trying to compete in the cheap phones market. They're making devices more accessible so that more people have access to their services platform.
This is why Apple is spending billions on research into recycling devices. This is why Apple is pushing folk towards subscribing to their devices and returning them to Apple when they upgrade This is why they're building out services and education and after care.
Just today, Canalys has stated that Huawei has claimed the top spot worldwide in handset sales in spite of the pandemic, not having access to one of the world's largest handset markets and with the U.S government literally trying to destroy the company. For context, this is the first time in nine years that Samsung or Apple hasn't held the position.
Yeah, this would be a lot more impressive if they weren't the favoured company in the actual largest handset market and weren't being supported by a government that browbeats American competition while turning a blind eye to wholesale IP theft.
And being "one of the world's largest handset markets" bears little weight when the market in question is in the grips of a pandemic and its worst economic contraction on record. So I'm not sure if congratulations should go to Huawei, or to the Chinese government for getting a handle on the pandemic so quickly, and even then, I think it would be something of a slow clap of congratulations, since the virus did originate there, and so they had something of a head start on the rest of the planet, especially since they chose to keep live-saving information from the rest of the world.
If the Chinese government sought to share the information on the virus when they became aware of it, instead of trying to suppress it, then tens of thousands of lives worldwide could have been saved, as well as millions of jobs and several economies), which is why crowing about Huawei being the top selling handset is a bit strange considering the cowardly actions of the government supporting played no small part in getting them there.
You are very wrong with a lot that of that.
Firstly, I never ever pat myself on the back. If you run through a lot of the changes Apple has made over the last four years, my reaction was to applaud the move and that's it. Not gloat in how wrong people were. And yes, many were very wrong with their reactions to what I said.
There has been very vocal pushback against what I've suggested, so it is flabbergasting how you now try to suggest that everyone knew these changes needed to be made. That is absolutely NOT the case. These forums are full of some people claiming I was some kind of crackpot for even suggesting what I suggested.
The thing is though, there is often someone that pops their head up and takes a drive-by potshot and then I have no option but to ask them to first back up their claims and then point out why they are wrong. That isn't back patting. That's me being obliged to set them straight. Just like in this case.
Do you think the OP is going to support his pot shot with anything remotely in line with what I asked him to do? Of course not.
Let's take the most recent Apple move. The low cost iPhone (the SE) and the time of year when it was released. There was no 'back patting' on my part. I limited my comments to supporting the idea behind it (because it fell in line with what I thought was needed). Why on earth would I knock that move? However, it normally doesn't take long for someone to take a pot shot and then we enter the cycle again and I ask for the claim to be backed up. It never is. Far from actually backing anything up the usual process is just to see more nonsense posted and you yourself have now fallen flat on your face claiming 'everyone' knew these changes were coming and therefore I was stating the obvious.
That is not the case. Not even remotely. The same names crop up over and over in these cases.
None of what you stated was 'obvious' to those people. If it were, they wouldn't have spent so much energy trying to say I was wrong.
As for the actual situation and Huawei you seem somewhat out of whack with reality. Everybody has been in the same situation. Almost all phones depend on Chinese supply lines. Demand for Huawei phones in China could have offset lack of demand elsewhere but everybody was pulling phones out of the same places and of course selling them in the same market conditions - with the exception of Huawei whose supply lines are being attacked directly by the U.S government. What they have achieved according to Canalys is nothing short of outstanding.
And I will point out for the umpteenth time that my comments on Apple have almost exclusively revolved around its handset business. People often seem to think I am talking about Apple's business in general. Mostly that isn't the case.
As for saying everybody knew that Apple couldn't rely on phones forever. Well, that isn't true either. Begrudgingly, many people here have now accepted this to be the case but you seem to have a very short memory. Before sales flattened, there was an overwhelming view that the market would be led by Apple's innovation and that people would gladly pay for the premium, locked in experience.
The business model was perfection in motion and Android would be the copycat cloner pulling up the rear.
What a difference four years make!
As for being 'obvious' , well yes, to me it was, but don't try to claim everybody thought the same, because that couldn't be further from the truth.
Most of us on this site are probably pretty happy... with Apple and with Tim Cook.
Not Avon b7 or gatorguy. Avon b7 will be in shortly to explain to us why Huawei is superior to Apple in every metric. Gatorguy will be by to explain why Google is in a better position than Apple. You can count on it like death and taxes.
LOL... If I did it would be a first for me. I've never believed Google to be in a better position than Apple and 100% certain I've not claimed it since it's not true. I wish you were as careful with the truth so you wouldn't write such silliness so often.
Some of the stuff you come up with...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but were you the guy who said Google had "unlimited growth" potential because of online ads?
Ugh!!!! Why is this company such a failure? By every metric! It makes too many great products (some could be better), pushes boundaries, solves too many tech problems (their own chips) and makes too much money.
Apple has not changed its direction since Steve Jobs was alive. Some of us have literally been saying Apple deserves a 30 P/E since the Great Recession. But it had AT LEAST 3 trips down to sub-10 P/E in that time, generally floating at an average P/E of about 14.
For those of us primarily invested in AAPL from that time who were also forced into retirement by the GR and thus had to liquidate shares to live, we absorbed a LOT of loss at those abysmal prices.
That all changed when Apple started using its massive cash position to buy back cheap AAPL stock. Why? Cumulatively, Apple bought back over 1/3 of its outstanding stock float from its peak back in 2013. And it paid an average price per share of an astonishing $150/share.
The result for the longer term investor was to see their percentage per share ownership of the company increase markedly. In essence, Apple "invested" in itself on behalf of its long term investors. It could have chosen to spend the buyback money on dividends. But dividends are taxed, while buybacks are not.
And there was another non-obvious impact: The percentage of long term investors versus short term market players has vastly increased largely due to the buybacks. You can see that if you look at the volumes traded before Apple started its buybacks versus lately. Now, that doesn't mean that there still isn't tremendous volatility in AAPL. But the day of the huge drops down to single digit P/E's are gone for good. There are just too many buy-and-hold investors that will refuse to panic out of AAPL. And thus stock manipulators can no longer easily push it over a cliff, like was done constantly in the bad old days.
Meanwhile, Apple continues to grow, huge company that it is. The fake "law of large numbers" propaganda has been completely proven false in Apple's case.
Now, I have to honestly admit that this latest move towards finally fairly valuing AAPL has taken me by surprise, even though I long predicted that the worm would eventually turn. But a lot of that is down to the completely mishandled pandemic that has begun (yes, begun) stalking the world and this country. A company like Apple that has its moral values, has always stuck to its knitting, and is in the market niche it occupies, was pretty much destined to succeed fantastically in this environment, relatively speaking. But it was completely unpredictable that this administration and the Republicans that have gone to the wall enabling it would make such an incredible hash of protecting US citizens from that pandemic.
Sorry if that seems political, but it's simply fact.
Dividends and capital gains on stock held less than a year are taxed as ordinary income.
Dividends and cap gains on stock held for more than a year are taxed as capital gains.
The problem with buybacks is they reward folks who abandon the stock rather than those who hold on to them for the long term.
Yeah, yeah, buybacks supposedly benefit the latter because it reduces the number of shares outstanding, but sometimes people prefer a little more cold hard cash now rather than a promise of an even better but still uncertain future.
Dividends and capital gains on stock held less than a year are taxed as ordinary income.
Dividends and cap gains on stock held for more than a year are taxed as capital gains.
The problem with buybacks is they reward folks who abandon the stock rather than those who hold on to them for the long term.
Yeah, yeah, buybacks supposedly benefit the latter because it reduces the number of shares outstanding, but sometimes people prefer a little more cold hard cash now rather than a promise of an even better but still uncertain future.
Tundraboy, "buybacks or dividends?" is actually a question I've asked myself and explored deeply. What you don't know about us is that we've been 100% invested in Apple since we started acquiring those AAPL shares (except for a brief, limited, and ultimately disastrous foray), so it was an important question for us to answer. I did the math once, but I don't know what I've done with it, and I'm not going to repeat the exercise.
There's a simple and very logical reason why buybacks are the better approach:
First, aside from some real gambles like AMZN and FB, AAPL clearly was and continues to be an excellent investment (and far less of a gamble to someone like me who's studied it deeply for years AND is deep into their retirement years).
Second, if Apple had given out dividends rather than doing buybacks, I would literally have taken any money left over from our living expenses* and bought more AAPL with it - and have been right to do so. IOW, I would have done exactly what Apple did, except that I would have had to pay tax on the cash, and thus would have only been able to buy back a smaller amount of stock than Apple could. Also, assuming Apple did NO buybacks, the total float would not have been reduced. Rather, because of stock options and the like, the total float would actually have increased. That would have reduced the EPS and the percentage ownership of Apple for each outstanding share.
(*Note: Thanks to the Great Recession, we weren't afforded the luxury of having sufficient income to NOT use all our dividends as cash AND sell shares, just to keep on an even keel. But. In essence, I was selling my shares back to Apple, who promptly removed them from the float, apart from a few that went towards stock options for Apple employees, which served to help Apple retain its best folks, thus helping the business, and hence the long term owners of the business.)
Bottom line: I, a long term Apple-only investor, have benefitted from buybacks to date more than if I had gotten the cash in dividends.
Comments
Sara Fischer(?) made an interesting observation regarding Facebook’s relative success in ad revenue when compared To Google:
Facebook ads are weighted more towards products.
Lots of people like patting themselves on the back for stating the obvious, but what they often fail to mention is the circumstances surrounding the back-patting.
Everyone, and I mean literally everyone knew that the Apple couldn't rely on the high-end forever. In fact everyone, and I mean literally everyone, knew that they couldn't rely on phones forever, full stop.
The problem isn't that you were predicting the obvious; the problem is that you were calling for Apple to do the obvious at a time when they were still making bags of cash on the high end. The trick is not if, it's when. Apple was always going to do this, but doing it when you said they should do it would have cost them billions in revenue.
The other thing that all your 'I said' statements fail to address Apple's long term goal, which is certainly wasn't to join the Android OEMs in a race to the bottom. The point you've missed is the why. They're not making cheap phones because they're trying to compete in the cheap phones market. They're making devices more accessible so that more people have access to their services platform.
This is why Apple is spending billions on research into recycling devices.
This is why Apple is pushing folk towards subscribing to their devices and returning them to Apple when they upgrade
This is why they're building out services and education and after care.
Yeah, this would be a lot more impressive if they weren't the favoured company in the actual largest handset market and weren't being supported by a government that browbeats American competition while turning a blind eye to wholesale IP theft.
And being "one of the world's largest handset markets" bears little weight when the market in question is in the grips of a pandemic and its worst economic contraction on record. So I'm not sure if congratulations should go to Huawei, or to the Chinese government for getting a handle on the pandemic so quickly, and even then, I think it would be something of a slow clap of congratulations, since the virus did originate there, and so they had something of a head start on the rest of the planet, especially since they chose to keep live-saving information from the rest of the world.
If the Chinese government sought to share the information on the virus when they became aware of it, instead of trying to suppress it, then tens of thousands of lives worldwide could have been saved, as well as millions of jobs and several economies), which is why crowing about Huawei being the top selling handset is a bit strange considering the cowardly actions of the government supporting played no small part in getting them there.
He's no doubt acutely aware that being too successful attracts the wrong kind of attention
They certainly don't make money by stating what everyone else already knows.
Well, most analysts expected the iPhone sales to drop off a cliff, so …
The thing is that @AvonB7 is bragging about saying Apple should be making cheaper phones, when Apple was already planning on how to move to a service model, sidestepping the phone as its most important revenue generator.
U.S. culture. They hate seeing their own people rise. Congress seems to wanna take Apple down and replace them with Chinese knockoffs like Huawei or OnePlus. Companies that have ZERO innovation and would stagnate the industry without Apple's inventions.
Firstly, I never ever pat myself on the back. If you run through a lot of the changes Apple has made over the last four years, my reaction was to applaud the move and that's it. Not gloat in how wrong people were. And yes, many were very wrong with their reactions to what I said.
There has been very vocal pushback against what I've suggested, so it is flabbergasting how you now try to suggest that everyone knew these changes needed to be made. That is absolutely NOT the case. These forums are full of some people claiming I was some kind of crackpot for even suggesting what I suggested.
The thing is though, there is often someone that pops their head up and takes a drive-by potshot and then I have no option but to ask them to first back up their claims and then point out why they are wrong. That isn't back patting. That's me being obliged to set them straight. Just like in this case.
Do you think the OP is going to support his pot shot with anything remotely in line with what I asked him to do? Of course not.
Let's take the most recent Apple move. The low cost iPhone (the SE) and the time of year when it was released. There was no 'back patting' on my part. I limited my comments to supporting the idea behind it (because it fell in line with what I thought was needed). Why on earth would I knock that move? However, it normally doesn't take long for someone to take a pot shot and then we enter the cycle again and I ask for the claim to be backed up. It never is. Far from actually backing anything up the usual process is just to see more nonsense posted and you yourself have now fallen flat on your face claiming 'everyone' knew these changes were coming and therefore I was stating the obvious.
That is not the case. Not even remotely. The same names crop up over and over in these cases.
None of what you stated was 'obvious' to those people. If it were, they wouldn't have spent so much energy trying to say I was wrong.
As for the actual situation and Huawei you seem somewhat out of whack with reality. Everybody has been in the same situation. Almost all phones depend on Chinese supply lines. Demand for Huawei phones in China could have offset lack of demand elsewhere but everybody was pulling phones out of the same places and of course selling them in the same market conditions - with the exception of Huawei whose supply lines are being attacked directly by the U.S government. What they have achieved according to Canalys is nothing short of outstanding.
And I will point out for the umpteenth time that my comments on Apple have almost exclusively revolved around its handset business. People often seem to think I am talking about Apple's business in general. Mostly that isn't the case.
As for saying everybody knew that Apple couldn't rely on phones forever. Well, that isn't true either. Begrudgingly, many people here have now accepted this to be the case but you seem to have a very short memory. Before sales flattened, there was an overwhelming view that the market would be led by Apple's innovation and that people would gladly pay for the premium, locked in experience.
The business model was perfection in motion and Android would be the copycat cloner pulling up the rear.
What a difference four years make!
As for being 'obvious' , well yes, to me it was, but don't try to claim everybody thought the same, because that couldn't be further from the truth.
shame!
Jimmy crack cocaine and I Don’t Care,
Jimmy crack cocaine and I DON’T CARE,
For those of us primarily invested in AAPL from that time who were also forced into retirement by the GR and thus had to liquidate shares to live, we absorbed a LOT of loss at those abysmal prices.
That all changed when Apple started using its massive cash position to buy back cheap AAPL stock. Why? Cumulatively, Apple bought back over 1/3 of its outstanding stock float from its peak back in 2013. And it paid an average price per share of an astonishing $150/share.
The result for the longer term investor was to see their percentage per share ownership of the company increase markedly. In essence, Apple "invested" in itself on behalf of its long term investors. It could have chosen to spend the buyback money on dividends. But dividends are taxed, while buybacks are not.
And there was another non-obvious impact: The percentage of long term investors versus short term market players has vastly increased largely due to the buybacks. You can see that if you look at the volumes traded before Apple started its buybacks versus lately. Now, that doesn't mean that there still isn't tremendous volatility in AAPL. But the day of the huge drops down to single digit P/E's are gone for good. There are just too many buy-and-hold investors that will refuse to panic out of AAPL. And thus stock manipulators can no longer easily push it over a cliff, like was done constantly in the bad old days.
Meanwhile, Apple continues to grow, huge company that it is. The fake "law of large numbers" propaganda has been completely proven false in Apple's case.
Now, I have to honestly admit that this latest move towards finally fairly valuing AAPL has taken me by surprise, even though I long predicted that the worm would eventually turn. But a lot of that is down to the completely mishandled pandemic that has begun (yes, begun) stalking the world and this country. A company like Apple that has its moral values, has always stuck to its knitting, and is in the market niche it occupies, was pretty much destined to succeed fantastically in this environment, relatively speaking. But it was completely unpredictable that this administration and the Republicans that have gone to the wall enabling it would make such an incredible hash of protecting US citizens from that pandemic.
Sorry if that seems political, but it's simply fact.
Dividends and cap gains on stock held for more than a year are taxed as capital gains.
The problem with buybacks is they reward folks who abandon the stock rather than those who hold on to them for the long term.
Yeah, yeah, buybacks supposedly benefit the latter because it reduces the number of shares outstanding, but sometimes people prefer a little more cold hard cash now rather than a promise of an even better but still uncertain future.
There's a simple and very logical reason why buybacks are the better approach:
First, aside from some real gambles like AMZN and FB, AAPL clearly was and continues to be an excellent investment (and far less of a gamble to someone like me who's studied it deeply for years AND is deep into their retirement years).
Second, if Apple had given out dividends rather than doing buybacks, I would literally have taken any money left over from our living expenses* and bought more AAPL with it - and have been right to do so. IOW, I would have done exactly what Apple did, except that I would have had to pay tax on the cash, and thus would have only been able to buy back a smaller amount of stock than Apple could. Also, assuming Apple did NO buybacks, the total float would not have been reduced. Rather, because of stock options and the like, the total float would actually have increased. That would have reduced the EPS and the percentage ownership of Apple for each outstanding share.
(*Note: Thanks to the Great Recession, we weren't afforded the luxury of having sufficient income to NOT use all our dividends as cash AND sell shares, just to keep on an even keel. But. In essence, I was selling my shares back to Apple, who promptly removed them from the float, apart from a few that went towards stock options for Apple employees, which served to help Apple retain its best folks, thus helping the business, and hence the long term owners of the business.)
Bottom line: I, a long term Apple-only investor, have benefitted from buybacks to date more than if I had gotten the cash in dividends.