Are you serious about this?
The stock price is slightly higher now than it was when Jobs died. It was MUCH higher not too long ago, again after he died.
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Apple Reportedly Preparing to Announce Larger Dividend or Stock Buyback
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Are you serious about this?
The stock price is slightly higher now than it was when Jobs died. It was MUCH higher not too long ago, again after he died.
How quickly do you expect Ive to deliver the next new iOS after Forstall was demoted and shuttered? How quickly do you expect 10.9? Can we give the company time to develop the products, so that they bring it to us right, as opposed to feeding the media nattering negativity machine?
We hear rumors of this and that, that's why we come here. However, why would we expect them to release something counter to the general schedules that this corporation has operated with for some time now?
I mean, this isn't about cheerleading for Apple, but I do like many of their products and I have been a 20+ year customer. It isn't even officially Spring yet! Can we have the patience to wait until the summer (at least until WWDC) to see what is going to happen? Goodness!
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This. When Jobs passed, Apple was around $375.
Yeah, because caving to the owners of the company is just awful!
So never pay a dividend? Never liquidate? Equity value is based off of cash flows to equity holders discounted to the present. If Apple never gives any cash back it's not worth anything to the equity holders.
I could be incredibly wrong, but it just feels like the focus of the owners has shifted. I personally think not paying regular dividends seems like madness (if you own the company, you should get a cut of the profits!), but now it seems like THE main focus is stock price and what Apple is going to do with their money.
Where is the focus on improving the products? They feel like they move at a snail's pace now, yet we are constantly hearing about money issues. I guess the investors figure Apple have done their part to set up a huge cash making machine, and now they want their cut of the action. The products hardly matter anymore.
You must be slurping the Cupertino and Cook KOOLAID. Go back and read my posts - China Mobile contract has been under "discussion:" for years now. Mac Pro? Pandora music streaming? Apple TV has gone form a hobby to an intense interest to ???? Cook has blathered on about how there are "intense discussions" regarding increasing the returns to shareholders (very key given the stock beating since September). They have had plenty of time to sort these issues - as another poster said, they are moving at a snail's pace now.
Cook has had more than enough time - he just keeps blathering on about critical issues being under "intense discussions" but little happens.
BTW - I never mentioned IOS or 10.9 - the examples I gave are long overdue a solution.
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Tim Cook and his Team are failing to fill the news vacuum with exceptional products and innovation and inspiration. So the media jump in and fill it for them with all the negatives that exist or are thought to exist. Thus the stock price continues to slump.
Tim Cook has not done that good a job in his area of expertise - supply chain.Law suits back and forth with his main supplier (SAMSUNG), screen lamination problems, difficult to assemble iPhone5, etc.
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It really IS important. All we have seen from Tim & Team thus far is a trajectory that Steve and a different team had them on.
Tim is increasingly unimpressive as the Apple leader. Not sure what else to do but the pace of innovation and execution stumbles are concerning - especially given all the resources they have.
Squandering the lead comes to mind.
You think that's bad? The day Jonny Ive goes, the Apple stock will tank 100x worse.
Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that I am not going to even sip any Cook / Cupertino / Ives KOOLAID - we need to see some exciting new products that will knock customers socks off. Enough already with all of Cook's "intense discussions or interest" comments. Those things are sounding to me like he has no answers for the pressing issues. The stock continues to slump.
How damn long does it take to develop / build / ship a new Mac Pro for example. It has to have a motherboard, cpu, gpu, memory, drives, power supply and a case. Maybe Ives has run his course as well?
All of the focus on what to do with those billions of dollars. How about hiring a few more engineers and pump out the new stuff !! Just maybe they don't know what the new stuff needs to be.
That only rarely happened under Jobs.
The iMac knocked everyone's socks off, or at least got them talking. In 1998.
Three years later, in 2001, the iPod did the same.
Then there was a period of steady product improvement and necessary technical changes until the iPhone launched in 2007. Six years after the iPod.
Then thee years after that, the iPad launched.
It's now been less than three years since the launch of the iPad, and people are saying the next revolution is overdue? It's never been like that.
Apple's big product launches have had a space of three to six years between them. The rest of the time has been a period of incremental improvement and behind-the-scenes product development... just like now.
If in three years time, Apple is still touting the iPhone, iPad, iMac and Macbook as their main products, then it will be time to start talking about stagnation.
You're certainly not alone in that feeling, but I'm not sure I agree. Even at 700, the fundamentals were not high: PEG was well below 1.0. PE of about 16+, (in comparison, GOOG PE is 50% higher than Apple was at 700).
I think the high share price contributes to the perception of being overpriced. If Apple had done a stock split and was selling at 70 at the peak, I wonder if as many people would have thought the stock was overpriced.
What do stockholders do for a company making a lot of money? I'm confused. It's like leading money though once you "lend" the company money, you are free to sell your stock and recoup your investment. Why hold It?
I'm a shareholder that would rather see them use a large sum to expand R&D for greater innovation.
Not if you realize that Apple's revenue and profits are going to start shrinking dramatically per Apple's own guidance from the last quarterly report and from all the reports of slow down and weak demand from Apple suppliers. And let's not forget Apple's failure in countries outside the US where Android dominates.
INNOVATION is accelerating - innovating at yesterdays pace is getting behind. Also, China Mobile? Apple TV? Pandora like streaming? Mac Pro?
Compared to what? Based on what metric?
You sound pretty confident. Do you have some insider info about what's in Apple's R&D labs? You seem to think they're not making anything interesting at all.
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Bingo. People who think the stock price is too high based on the share price clearly don't know anything about stock valuation.
Hmmm...So what's a bargain? You could have bought at $80.00 4 1/2 years ago. I guess it depends on your definition of a bargain.
Steve Jobs was irreplaceable for sure, one of kind. He was known for his "reality distortion field". The thing is he created Apple in his own image. It's structure is unlike any other corporate giant. So you are wrong in assuming Apple is just like any other company now that he's gone. Steve Jobs didn't invent anything. He had uncommon vision in seeing something and knowing whether it was a great idea or not, and he knew how to hone the idea to it's fullest potential. That's what Apple is all about. We will see if he was able to instill the necessary ingredients in his company to have it fire on all cylinders without him. Time will tell. I wouldn't bet against him or Apple.
You are not forced to sell your stock. If you are long-term (like me), you can pass when asked. Apple cannot compel you to get rid of anything. Plenty of others who day-trade would be happy getting a quick profit from forking over their shares.
Most def, for sure. I can think of more than a few politicians on all levels of gov't and a few appt'd officials too. Then there's all the guys that actually, not metaphorically, earn $ illicitly at the expense of others: child traffickers, drug kingpins, sweatshop owners, slumlords, etc.
There are some "scumbags" that are also managers of hedge funds, but not all hedge fund managers, or people who work for hedge funds, are "scumbags." You sink your own credibility when you make such sweeping statements.
You have this backwards, the stockholders own the company, so it isn't what the stockholders do for the company it is what the company should do for the stockholders. Which is namely distribute cash or grow in value.
Yes stockholders only give money to the company at the initial issuance. For a company like apple it has little need to issue new stock. So the stock price really doesn't matter too much to the company. However, and this is big for tech companies, many employees are paid in stock. So when stock price drops all of management and many many of the employees are seeing a real hit to their wealth. So they might care. That can be bad for moral. And it can even destroy a tech company if the employees believe the stock can't recover and they decide they have to go somewhere else to get paid stock options in a hit company.
But the employees are long time holders. So they should not freak out like folks on this board. At least we hope they aren't distracted by this nonsense.
No. A company can't confiscate your property; it's not the government (eminent domain, civil seizure, court order, etc).
There are two ways companies do buybacks:
1) They offer shareholders a set price for the stock with an expiration date. The shareholder can take the offer or toss it in the trash. Typically these types of offers are for shareholder with odd lots when a share price is low. The advantage is they avoid paying commission fees that could outstrip the gross proceeds of a sale. But given Apple's share price this type isn't likely.
2) A company slowly and systematically buys shares in the open market just like everyone else. This often boosts share price because demand/volume is boosted by company activity. This is the type of buyback Apple would likely proceed with.
I hear ya, but I do think we have to wait at least until WWDC to see where Apple is heading. I was hopeful, but have been disappointed with Cook to-date, but he did root Forstall out, so +1 there. That does tell me that Cook doesn't have a completely tin ear.
As for MPs, Aperture, Pandora-esque... these are not game changers for Apple. I'm anxious for the former two myself, but they are sleepers as far as consumers are concerned, and Apple's bottom line as well. A streaming service might be interesting, but I have no qualms with Pandora, and I suspect a "free" Apple service will have similar restrictions.