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Record profits and cash flows are in the past. The market value is based upon expected future performance.

If you can understand that, there will be no confusion as to the reasons why they are different.

Bottom line: Wall Street expects that Apple's future profits and cash flows are now worth much less than what they used to be.

And therein lies the problem with financials of today... We value something based upon speculative "maybe's of the future" as opposed to its actual value. I.E. paper money vs gold and silver. Profits and earnings should be the major contributor to a company's MCAP with forecasts playing the minor role. Not the other way around.
 
Does anyone else here think that Apple seems to have lost their innovative shine?

I mean, during the early 2000s it seems they came out with new computer designs each year: the flower iMac, the Cube, PowerBook Titanium etc... Hell, they've been shipping the same external case for the PowerMac G5/Mac Pro since 2003!!!

I know that true innovation is difficult but Apple seems to only iterate these days with minor changes and not much innovation. Just smacks me of profiteering. It's like they don't care as much as they used to.
 
Please don't shoot me but I think that, although I'm not at all a marxist, this crosses a line. A remuneration of more than 5 mil$ is just ridiculous. All those Foxconn workers work a whole day just to make enough money to survive, and what does Apple? They make sure that Bob and co can make a pool to fill with money, and they overcharge their costumers on most of their products. If I were in their place, I would set up a fund where managers all over the world can freely donate a part of their remuneration, which is then used to solve more critical problems such as extreme poverty, pollution and so on. Unfortunately, most of the people only think about earning more money for themselves instead of caring about the society and our exploited mother earth.

Where did you pull the 5 mill number from? Also, how do you know that they are not already donating? They could be evil and they could be good, just because they earn significant chunk of money does not mean that they are selfish.

Guys, towards the end of the day, it's a supply and demand issue, there is a lot of demand for those guys and their talent, Apple needs to keep it lucrative and tempting.

Think about it, how many people switch jobs for few extra thousand dollars? Don't you think that if Apple cuts their compensation they would go for Google or Samsung?

Supply, and demand!
 
If they were execs in a bank or oil company there would be protest, but Apple, I guess that's okay :rolleyes:
 
All that freakin' money they're rolling in and they can't even give me a 4.5" iPhone. :mad:
 
The measure of "success" is the stock price. That is what Apple's owners care about. And these guys are not making Apple successful. They are dropping the ball big time.

Where is there salary coming from? The stock price sucks but the company has tons of cash.

They dropped the ball on the stocks, but the company itself is still a success.

I am not saying that is right, just saying Apple brings in a lot of money (which is how I would measure "success") right now. It may not last, but this is an article regarding the fiscal 2012 year, not the future.
 
All that freakin' money they're rolling in and they can't even give me a 4.5" iPhone. :mad:

There are other choices. I switched to a Galaxy S3 and I really don't miss the iPhone. Especially the small screen. Android has grown up a LOT in the last year and I fear Apple really has to innovate iOS going forward. There is so much lacking when I use an iPhone compared to what I'm used to now.
 
To avoid a socio-political debate, I will state I am not a member of any political party and base each and every decision on the merits of the issue, not on towing a "liberal" or "conservative" party as that has proven to divide, not unite, a nation. I am fiscally conservative and [very] socially liberal.

However, that amount of money is sickening. My father was a successful Bear Stearns investment banker for many years, I've seen sick amounts of money being traded akin to Monopoly money. Derivatives, betting against defaults, millions trading hands in a matter of minutes. Capitalism or Communism, they have much in common than most realize. The "free market" is a ponzi scheme; those who have money, make money, and those who don't have a small chance at success. Taking money from one group, investing it in an [theoretically] unstable system as the stock exchange, those individuals taking money from another, and so on and so on. Taking the system as a whole, it's rather shoddy ideology wrapped up in a guise of "freedom".

That being stated, didn't Mansfield "leave" or cash in large amounts of stock options for millions, only to "return" just in time to acquire millions of dollars in more stock? That's a lot of incentive for, well, very little work.

Just throwing that out there. Hope everyone had a great weekend!
 
In lieu of news and rumors you care about...
Almost as exciting as reading a prospectus.
Maybe be NoMacRumors can start covering sports trivia. :D
 
What a waste of money - these tools are all replaceable.

Apple would have been better off using the money to lure Avie Tevanian back to OS X development or maybe let him work his magic on iOS.

I wonder where Jony Ive is on that list?
Does any of you know?

The big salaries are reserved for business tools who don't design, engineer, or build anything.
 
Where did you pull the 5 mill number from? Also, how do you know that they are not already donating? They could be evil and they could be good, just because they earn significant chunk of money does not mean that they are selfish.

Guys, towards the end of the day, it's a supply and demand issue, there is a lot of demand for those guys and their talent, Apple needs to keep it lucrative and tempting.

Think about it, how many people switch jobs for few extra thousand dollars? Don't you think that if Apple cuts their compensation they would go for Google or Samsung?

Supply, and demand!

The 5mil is just a very wrough number, based on what I read on the subject. I agree and of course understand that Apple has to offer competitive wages to their top managers to attract and keep them, but over 60million dollars isn't competitive, it's outrageous, hence the 2nd,3rd, 4th and 5th place in the ranking mentioned in the article.
And come on, they won't ever go to Samsung. The corporate cultures are way too different.
 
To be honest with the amount of work these guys have to do, money doesn't really matter.

They do less work than the average Foxconn line worker. They are less replaceable than an average line worker, but not to the degree suggested by the pay differential.
 
No doubt good leadership is worth a premium, but no single individual should be making 300X the engineer writing the actual code.

Sometimes it's true but not in the case of Apple. I'm an engineer who write the actual code for iOS platforms for companies. I have the chance of working closely with leaderships. The impacts and responsibilities that these guys have is so much more then the engineers. They have to deal with businesses, legals, bunch of other resources and competitions while maintain a good relationship with everyone. That's tough!!

The ability to have a handsome term contract with record labels, hardware, shipping, services, etc are a lot harder than making the software work on the device.
 
Just some perspective: Mansfield earnings could pay for 500 top notch engineers, any one of which could build a version of iTunes that doesn't corrupt my library weekly.
 
These men have earned all the damning materialism and futile obligations of wealth for eternity.

Don't take that away from them!
 
Wait till 2016 and 2021 when he gets his RSU stocks. That is unless AAPL stocks don't tank by then.

We'll never know unless Apple decides to change his status and they're required to report salary, stock grants and sales to the SEC. My guess is Ive is perfectly fine with that information remaining private.
 
You mean the rank and file employees?

Exactly. Just like all those other wildly successful companies with tons of employees and incompetent or no leadership. Oh, wait. Those companies go out of business or are deemed too important to union special interests and propped up with taxpayer dollars.
 
In b4 all of the liberal hippies who will come and say "no one deserves to make that much money!"

Oh please, give it a rest. This "in b4" shadowboxing thing is silly. Your position will be much clearer if you just say what you think. Not what you guess somebody else may think.

My opinion? Good for them. I think they deserve it. I hope it makes other US companies sit up and raise their game.
 
I know that true innovation is difficult but Apple seems to only iterate these days with minor changes and not much innovation. Just smacks me of profiteering. It's like they don't care as much as they used to.

Well, Apple is responsible for many of the largest consumer tech revolutions since y2k.
iPod, iPhone and iPad — and with them they cracked digital distribution of music with iTunes and digital distribution of apps with the App Store. What they've accomplished in retail is also in a league of its own.
Apple really nailed all these concepts. And now they are iterating like mad. That's the way progress goes.

Can you tell me about any other recent tech revolution on this scale, cracked by someone else — where you can rightfully say "Apple should have seen this one — I'm dissapointed they didn't come up with this?"
— I can't come up with any. Not one. But maybe I've forgotten or missed something?
 
That money has to go somewhere, why not the people who helped make the company so successful?

I understand why, but I still find it very amusing that their boss was 1016th on the list while they are 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th.

Well, part of that comes down to how the compensation is structured. Cook's got a HUGE pricetag but it's spread over ten years to keep him focused on long term objectives.

Berkshire Hathaway has a similar situation in that Buffett's compensation is pretty small... about $100,000 base salary and he is sitting on his majority stake which he is depleting as he's making annual contributions to the Gates Foundation until 99 percent of his wealth has been given to charity.

By contrast, though, Ajit Jain who heads their thirty person reinsurance arm, General Re, gets a base salary seven times higher because that's what it is taking to keep him there.... Buffett stays for entirely different reasons that can't be expected of Jain.
 
The measure of "success" is the stock price. That is what Apple's owners care about. And these guys are not making Apple successful. They are dropping the ball big time.

They make big bucks while the guys who own the company are losing hundreds of billions of dollars.

They deserve to be fired.

Apple stock has suffered similar doldrums in the past. Go look at the how the stock fell in 2008. Did Steve Jobs deserved to be fired?

The measure of success is how much you can sell and how much of a profit you can make doing so (unless you're a monopoly like Amazon; then profits don't matter).

----------

Record profits and cash flows are in the past. The market value is based upon expected future performance.

If you can understand that, there will be no confusion as to the reasons why they are different.

Bottom line: Wall Street expects that Apple's future profits and cash flows are now worth much less than what they used to be.

So last summer when Wall Street was running the stock up to $700 it wasn't a concern but just a few months later all of a sudden it's a huge concern and $200+B is wiped off the value of the company. BS. What does Wall Street know now (or what did they know last fall) that they didn't know in the summer when they were running the stock up and it was the darling of Wall Street?
 
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