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How about dialing down the "growth" expectations? How big do you expect Apple to be for $deity sake? They are big. Much bigger than ever. Now it's not about big
by acqq 11y ago
How about dialing down the "growth" expectations? How big do you expect Apple to be for $deity sake? They are big. Much bigger than ever. Now it's not about big "growth" anymore, it's about staying big.
Edit: whoever wants to give some meaningful arguments can maybe use some comparable company as an example.
AAPL Mkt cap: 531,84B
MSFT Mkt cap: 382,79B
- pavlov 11y agoIf "no more growth" is going to be Apple's story to investors, the company needs to start paying a much bigger dividend.
- acqq 11y agoCan you please elaborate, let's say, comparing AAPL with MSFT as an example? http://www.streetinsider.com/dividend_history.php?q=aapl http://www.streetinsider.com/dividend_history.php?q=aapl http://www.streetinsider.com/dividend_history.php?q=msft http://www.streetinsider.com/dividend_history.php?q=msft
- osweiller 11y agoIf you exclude the cash horde (edit - the zombies hired to protect the vault full of cash), Apple's P/E ratio is running at around 5 right now. IBM is 10. Microsoft is about 35 if excluding their much smaller cash pile. Apple is ridiculously "undervalued" compared to any peer in the industry. It is a money printing colossus. Having said that, the market seems to get shivers around $600B, and that psychological barrier imposes a friction that makes the rules of the game change. No one can stay above that for long, and in the case of Apple its profoundly out of scale numbers makes everyone simply put it in a different universe of valuation.
- flurpitude 11y ago*hoard. Horde is zombies.
- MollyR 11y agoIs that really the whole story ? http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-isnt-really-sitting-on-216-billion-in-cash-2016-01-26 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-isnt-really-sitting-o... I honestly don't know and am interested in what you think of this article.
- osweiller 11y agoThat is an interesting article, but the meat of it contradicts, in a common sense, the title. For instance, no one thinks that Apple has a big vault with hundreds of billions in it. Like all rational players, they hold most of their negotiables in short term securities. For tax reasons they also have been taking on debt in some areas rather than liberate cash from elsewhere. But they have an enormous, enormous amount of wealth sitting virtually at a standstill. They have announced that they're going to spend a lot of it to buy back shares (boosting the value of the remaining shares), but they've been doing this so slowly they're adding to their pile quicker than they're spending it.
- martin1b 11y agoTo stay big, you need to innovate. The releases since Steve's death have been disappointing. Minor changes to existing products. Ok. The apple watch. But really? Swift may be one of the biggest releases in recent years. However, since it doesn't affect the public, is considered a non-release.
- acqq 11y ago> The releases since Steve's death have been disappointing. Minor changes to existing products. Ok. The apple watch. But really? Compare: Since Steve returned to Apple (1997) to the point of iPhone being presented (2007) there were almost 10 years of "minor changes." iPod? "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." (2001) Steve Jobs died in 2011. This time now is then an approximate year of the "Lame" sentiment.
- LgWoodenBadger 11y agoAren't you forgetting the whole OSX thing? And the whole PPC->Intel switch?
- martin1b 11y agoName a decent release since 2011 that is innovative.
- albeva 11y agoAgreed. This hysteria is getting tiresome. I think Apple should simply get rid of investors and go private. I think its big enough and has enough cash to do just that.
- xadhominemx 11y agoI can't tell if this is a joke? Apple couldn't use it's own cash to purchase itself from it's shareholders because the value of the company will always be greater than it's cash.
- selectodude 11y agoApple would have to borrow heavily to buy itself back, just like every other company that buys itself back. But if any company could go borrow $400bn in cash, it's Apple.
- dpark 11y agoA company cannot "buy itself back". That doesn't mean anything. The company never owned itself.
- mwfunk 11y agoThis is just plain wrong, you have major misconceptions about how publicly owned companies work.
- dpark 11y agoThanks for the detailed rebuttal. What exactly was "just plain wrong" about what I said?
- adventured 11y agoThe parent comment isn't wrong. Apple can't take itself private unto itself, there must be a human owner or owners that own all of Apple stock as a private corporation. Apple could team up with JP Morgan, Silver Lake Partners, and a dozen other firms to take itself private however, and they along with a likely small class of shareholders would own the private corporation (eg perhaps Tim Cook and Laurene Jobs would would choose to retain their large positions). There is no possible scenario under which a corporation can exist and continue to exist indefinitely in any of the 50 US states without a human owner somewhere in the chain, even if said owner is buried under a dozen shell companies.