radarthekat

lkrupp said:

melgross said:

It’s hard to predict for a number of reasons. These are odd times, to say the least. With revenue being a bit over $59 billion a year ago, estimating anything in the mid $70 billion range is already a huge bump. How much higher to go than that? I don’t think anyone can really get that right.

The law of large numbers doesn’t seem to be in play with Apple.

Law of Large Numbers Debunked

Among the arguments why Apple shares cannot outperform the market or its peers has been the oft repeated law of large numbers; the claim that Apple is too big to meaningfully grow and that its market cap, at over $600 billion, is so big that there aren't enough investment dollars to move the needle.

But the most recent [October 2015] earnings unwittingly provided an irrefutable counter argument by taking the combined market caps of GOOGL and AMZN to $800 billion.  The market seems to have no trouble adding $80 billion to these two companies, whose combined profits are a fraction of Apple's, but won't allow the same for a single company.  It was Microsoft's year 2000 valuation, north of $600 billion at the peak of the dotcom bubble and stagnant for the decade thereafter, that has since been used as the poster child for what happens to the company with the world's highest market cap.  The street is convinced that will be Apple's fate. 

What the market doesn't seem to understand is that vertically integrated Apple, in terms of the profits it generates and markets it addresses, is equivalent to the entire PC industry of the 1990s, including MSFT, Sony, Toshiba, IBM's PC division, Compaq, HP, and all the other PC makers.  Adjusted for inflation, MSFT's year 2000 valuation alone would today be $850 billion, against Apple's current $650 billion.  How much higher when you add in all the PC makers from 2000?

Apple's market cap, given the scope of its business, and adjusted for inflation, is very conservative.  As usual, the market is wrong.

gatorguy said:

theotherphil said:

I’m not sure why this is even a story. Every company has to follow the local laws of the country it is operating in. This doesn’t stop Apple providing the very best privacy and security that those local laws allow.

It's a story only because there is no requirement that Apple do business in China if they find the requirements too onerous. Yes Apple is a for-profit, and on balance the money to be made from business there outweighs any compromise of their stated "core values". Profit is profit is profit, no apologies needed.  

If they took major issue with the privacy of Chinese citizens or thought it important enough to make a statement, take a stand, they would. That's not generally what American corporations do, nor what stockholders expect. China won't change just because Apple doesn't like it. They're big but not THAT big. 

melgross said:

Being realistic, Apple could reach $340 billion this year if the next two quarters hit $70 billion each.

but with all the euphoria around, I’d like to remind people about what happened in 2016, 2017 and 2018. 2016 also had a major factor for about a 50% sales increase in iPhones because of the new large sizes. I tried to tell people that sales could be lower next year, and possibly even for the year after that. The reason was that people bought the big phones in 2016 who would otherwise have bought a phone the year after, and even some, the year after. Then, those people wouldn’t buy a phone in those years. That turned out to be true before sales began to rise again, despite pundits stating that Apple had seen “peak” iPhone.

this year, we have the pandemic. Many companies are seeing large sales lifts if their products fall into the area where people who are staying home would want and need. Computing and telecommunications were two of those areas. Food delivery services were another. Apple’s sales rise of 54% is stupendous, but I believe that some of that would have been next year, and some from the year after that, just as in 2016. So don’t be surprised if the might be a sales fall next year if the pandemic is mostly gone, and people are getting back to normal. Then, as a result, don’t be surprised if those wonderful pundits start talking about “peak” Apple, with a drop in share price.