Nice points, however if Apple was to trade at 7 times earnings of $40, they would be valued at right around the cash/securities holdings they'll have in 5 years. Investors have to face the fact that Apple will trade between $500-$800 for the foreseeable future, which is fine to me since it's very low-risk with a dividend.
I hope aapl goes down to $400 again. It'll give aapl the opportunity to buy-back millions of shares and i'll scoop up a few myself
The foreign cash is nice, except that it has a big tax liability attached to it if Apple ever want or need to bring it back to US. So if you mark down the foreign cash by the tax liability, all of a sudden, we loss 30+% of the value of the cash. Also tech companies are notorious bad in using their cash. I think Research in Motion still have a very nice cash stash of close to 3B (cash + short term investment) and it does not really help their valuation much. I don't think anyone should buy Apple hoping for their cash stash. It is a pie dream unless Tim Cook convince the board that they pay the tax or they figure out some way to spin off the foreign entity tax free to shareholders. Either one is a very low probability event now. The most problematic event is going to be the earning. CM launch is a joke in my book. The subsidy is as terrible as the CT and CU one and CM has very few 4G cities now. The real bright spot is the Docomo launch. It is not at all clear if fiscal 2Q guidance will be higher than fiscal 2q13 number and that is not a good sign to long Apple. I think the problem is the lengthening of the upgrade cycle. The buy your device markets probably slow down a lot more than all of us realize and hence the low Apple fiscal 1Q14 guidance they issued back in Oct.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1070235/000144530513003250/bbry-20131130x6k.htm