jdnc123

lkrupp said:

jdnc123 said:

Well, it was fun while it lasted, but starting tomorrow, Apple will no longer be the most valuable company in the world after Google beat earnings and the stock is up $50+ after-hours, if it holds.  No lamenting the global economy, or currency or any other lame excuses, they just keep growing earnings.  Vision and execution is trumping a huge void of vision and a whole heck of a lot of stubbing their own toes at Apple.  Best Tim Cook could do was blame the macro environment.  Good companies just execute.

Edit:  Google +$70 dollar now, it'll be a tens of billions gap starting tomorrow, but wont even be close at to who is the biggest and baddest company in the world soon with Cook leading Apple.

And my response will be the exact same thing YOU said when Apple passed up Microsoft and Google to become the most valuable company. YOU and your ilk said, and I paraphrase, “It means nothing. Microsoft and Google are still better than Apple will ever be. Just because Apple is worth more now than Microsoft or Google doesn’t mean its bigger or better. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Apple sux!”

Yes, YOU and your ilk said those very things when AAPL raced by MSFT and GOOG. Are you now going to say it now does mean something that Google passed up Apple? Really? You are going to say that? And keep a straight face too?

There has never been a company in the history of the world that has lost as much market cap as Apple in the midst of a broader bull market.  

FACT.  That is on Apple and Tim Cook.

rogifan_old said:

jdnc123 said:

The 'Google is bigger than Apple' story is all over the headlines I see right now.  Should be good for employee morale at Apple.  Many likely had a chance to choose between the two companies and the unlucky ones chose to join the company that was $200-300 billion bigger just a short few years ago.  What a historic and epic mistake on their part from a challenge and compensation perspective.  Yippy, talented engineers get to work on making the iPhone marginally better which nobody notices or cares about anymore.

Seriously, if Tim Cook does a big hoopla event for another incremental design change to the iPhone, he should be replaced.

Do you really think Apple employees give a shit whether their company is the most valuable company on a given day? I sure heck hope not. That's what AOL employees were obsessed with in the late 90s. Every employee had a stock ticker on their desktop and were constantly checking the share price. Where is AOL now? Buried inside of Verizon.

Btw, 90% of Google's revenue still comes from advertising, 80% from Google's own sites. And their "other bets" stuff takes in hardly any revenue but is full of lossss. And yet Apple's the "one trick pony" too dependent on iPhone. Fuck that.

UMMM, if they get stock comp, they care like hell.

sog35 said:

palomine said:

Aha. Now we see another important reason why Apple doesn't boot Google from its list of search engines on iOS. It's because they would go straight to making their own in-house phones. Well, then again it looks like they may do it anyway. Hope Apple kicks them to the curb.

It sickens me that Apple refuses to fight back.

They should have stuck it to Google long time ago. Yet Cook is happy with giving Google a ton of wealth by making Google the default search on iOS.

At the same time Google is trying to kill of Apple's life blood (iPhone sales) by giving Android away for free.  And now Google is serious about building top end hardware.

Steve Jobs said he would use all of Apple's cash to go thermo-nuclear on Android.
Yet because Cook continues to allow Google search as the default on iOS devices he has allowed Google to build a castle of gold.
Cooks is helping the very enemy Jobs swore to destroy.

The 'Google is bigger than Apple' story is all over the headlines I see right now.  Should be good for employee morale at Apple.  Many likely had a chance to choose between the two companies and the unlucky ones chose to join the company that was $200-300 billion bigger just a short few years ago.  What a historic and epic mistake on their part from a challenge and compensation perspective.  Yippy, talented engineers get to work on making the iPhone marginally better which nobody notices or cares about anymore.

Seriously, if Tim Cook does a big hoopla event for another incremental design change to the iPhone, he should be replaced.

Well, it was fun while it lasted, but starting tomorrow, Apple will no longer be the most valuable company in the world after Google beat earnings and the stock is up $50+ after-hours, if it holds.  No lamenting the global economy, or currency or any other lame excuses, they just keep growing earnings.  Vision and execution is trumping a huge void of vision and a whole heck of a lot of stubbing their own toes at Apple.  Best Tim Cook could do was blame the macro environment.  Good companies just execute.

Edit:  Google +$70 dollar now, it'll be a tens of billions gap starting tomorrow, but wont even be close at to who is the biggest and baddest company in the world soon with Cook leading Apple.

foggyhill said:

jdnc123 said:

Profits increased and multiples decreased.  It happens all the time, not just with Apple.  Its a rationale response to a slowing growth trajectory.  

Apple is currently on a negative growth trajectory.  They have more cash than any company in the history of the world and can't grow.  That's the main problem.  All the resources anyone can imagine and they can't muster up an idea to show growth from here.  It's reality until they prove the Street wrong and I got no sense from the conf call that they are prepared to change that view this year.  Frankly, it sounded pathetic and like panic.  Last quarter Cook says no problems in China and now this quarter they are experiencing a slowdown like they've never seen before.  Good fcking hell, everyone and their mother has been saying China was slowing down for a year and yet Cook got caught by surprise by it.  Maybe he didn't see it as early, but given all the datapoints out there that it was slowing he sure as heck could have made some contingencies versus just dismissing only 3 months ago.

I worry about employee retention.  Anyone who joined the company in the last three years is working for salary only and not stock comp as the options aren't increasing in value like they did in the past. Much easier to argue to yourself that you can kill it at a smaller startup (or at Google based on recent stock performance) if you are a talented engineer by NOT going to Apple.

It's the rising US dollar that's the main headwind, not China;
so you fracking predicted the US dollar going up 40% in less than 2 years?
Well, you should apply to become a god because I don't believe you.

Nobody expected oil prices dragging the whole planet in a near flatline like that.
Because no one expected the saudis to be that dumb in their hope of bankrupting those doing oil fracking.

That Apple kept their sales up with product prices going up that much is kind of a miracle with that kind of Macro headwind.

That's why Cook emphasized the fact that Apple's current users are not switching to others, that Apple is still gaining users; sales are delayed and not curtailed. That's an important difference.

BTW, you  didn't answer my argument, just side stepped it and expect I'll forget?
If a company grows 400% in 2 years and then stays at flatline for the next 8, it's still a much bigger company than a company growing 10% a year over the whole period, yet your criteria would give the stock price of that company in year 7 a incredibly higher value. That's basically what occurs in the case of Google versus Apple, or Facebook vs Apple or just about any tech company in the world versus Apple.

Actually I did call the oil collapse and run a fund based on that view.  Figured a dollar rise was part of that.

Apple could have spent a little money to hedge its FX risk.  They chose not to.  I view hedging as de-risking the unknown, not the known.  I guess Apple doesn't think that way and why they got caught with their pants down.  

Anyone who didnt see that the global economy was running on the fumes of QE-binging, simply had their heads in the sand.  I've been net short in fund and in my personal account that this downturn was coming.  Sadly, Apple was the big long position.  China is a house of cards.  Its been obvious for years.  Tim Cook was the last to know.

Apple could have used some of its massive cash hoard to diversify years ago into more services or social or search, you names it.  They got so myopically focused on the iPhone, they missed many huge and potential markets they could have competed in and changed the perception or story organically or through m&a.  Why they felt like in the past and even now that there are no possible uses of their cash in the entire world to help them grow this company only Tim Cook knows.  It looks like he simply got caught sleeping on the job.  Anyone who listened to that conference call heard a nonsensical attempt to change the narrative that fell flat on its face (even AAPL's biggest bull Gene Munster said Cook hurt the story by focusing on the services narrative that nobody believes, as they shouldn't).  iTunes sucks.  iCloud sucks.  They have more resources than any company that has ever walked the face of the planet and they can't get software/services working well or grow at all.

Forget about revenue growth that is impacted by FX.  Unit growth is now negative.  Whose fault is that???