Bad day all around. Apple can continue buyback on Tuesday next week so I think shorts are in control until then. GOOGL was down even harder. GOOGL had a worse quarter than AAPL, but I still don't think it was bad. AMZN is the one I still can't understand.
Apple's drop has been a lot harder than the DJIA, and as I'm sure you know Apple is so heavily weighted that a 1% drop in Apple = 10 points on the DJIA; so Apple alone is responsible for about 45 points of today's drop.
This is purely manipulation. Apple just confirmed what I have believed for years. They earned more profit than ever and more Apple devices are active than ever.
Very likely you're right about manipulation, it still seems amazing to me thought that Apple's numbers are all so good despite so much bad sounding news. Apple sold fewer phones (at a higher per unit and total price of course) in a shrinking overall smartphone market; have we passed peak smartphone as we've long ago past peak computer and peak tablet?
Analysts holding Apple to this made up standard even after 13% y/y growth is just ludicrous.
Again as I'm sure you know analysts look at y/y growth which is essentially the first derivative of revenue. But long term stock value is determine by the second derivative of revenue; the rate of change of growth, and what that is anticipated to be.
Apple exceeded the high end of their guidance and their profit was the highest ever. The "negative" was they "only" sold 77.3M iPhones when analysts thought 82M. I thought so too, but I didn't expect an $800 ASP. That made up for the slightly light iPhone sales. iPhone revenue was $62B versus $54B last year.
I understand what you're saying there, but it has a very strong resonance with the later part of Sculley's "successful" period. So I do agree with your facts but draw a different conclusion.
Dropping unit sales on a higher ASP only gets you so far.
Anyway, I think it's irresponsible to look at a 90 day period and judge a company's worth based on those 90 days. Apple is clearly the most profitable company in the world and just posted the best quarter in corporate history. Stock goes down 4%. But that's stocks.
Agreed, but I also still say Apple is chasing massive short term profit at the expense of customer loyalty and perceived product quality and value. What is the last Apple product that hasn't had some controversy over product quality?
Do you really think (going from 2015 to 2016 MBPs), the touchbar is really worth a $600 premium? That's the sort of thing that is making a huge profit now but hurting their reputation with their customers. Do you think customers cheer when they promise a $200 price cut on the MBP then when you go to order you see they cut the flash from 256 to 128 gig? Heck, my 2011 base model had 160 gig of storage, now in 2018 the base model at $300 more expensive for the non-touch model still only has 128? And the fact that we've moved to SSD is irrelevant because a 256 gig SSD in 2017 was cheaper than a 160 gig 2.5" HDD was in 2011. It is purely Apple padding their margins to give a worse experience. My 2004 powerbook g4 base model had a 60 gig HDD. Going from 2004 to 2018 -- 14 years!! -- Apple has only managed to double the storage in the base model of their MBP. That takes courage. And that 2004 was cheaper than the current 2017 yet a 60 gig HDD back in 2004 was a heck of a lot more expensive than a 256 gig SSD is today.
And that's another thing -- computers have become a lot cheaper since 2004, how is it than an entry level MBP is more expensive now than an entry level PowerBook was in 2004? Even Macs dropped significantly in price in the intervening years and then went back up even more.
Cloud storage has become so cheap; would it really hurt Apple's bottom line to increase the 5gig per device in "free' storage that they've offered for several years? I have an MBP, iPhone, and iPad on my account and that only gets me 5gig in 2018. Apple could buy a lot of goodwill for very little actual cost yet they're not willing to invest anything in goodwill anymore.
Apple is all about the profits now. They became a great company by caring about the product and customer and letting profits take care of themselves. But if they abuse their customers, they'll only go away.
