Apple's Stock Opened at Record of Nearly $160 Per Share With $830 Billion Valuation

[Bacillus]

Has it occured to you that perhaps this is simply the natural order of things?
....

Instead of leading a flock, it now has to cater to an audience. This is a drastically different relationship.

Their relationship with shareholders is likewise different. In this very forum, back in the 90s, people used to argue that Apple should just cash in the $4 billion they had in the bank, return it to investors, as that would be a bigger value than forging ahead with their products. Apple’s investors could certainly have forced that outcome, but they didn’t. They hung on, through dwindling marketshare and sales numbers, because they believed in the company.

Are the bulk of shareholders today just as likely to stick with them as those core shareholders from yore? If profits start dropping.. is this new shareholder population as willing to just go along with it? Or are they going to start thirstily eyeing those juicy hundreds of billion dollars sitting in the bank? How much would it take for this new population of shareholders to decide “hey, it was a good ride, let’s force the Apple directors to squeeze some of that juice out for us”?

In this new reality, that original core user and investor base.. those true believers.. they don’t matter anymore. They got to enjoy the ride from the start, but now their secluded island has been inundated by a population of visitors that outnumbers them by a couple of orders of magnitude.

This new population sets the tone for what kind of company Apple will be, because they have the power in this new relationship.

Has Apple “lost its way”? Apple will slowly transition into a much more traditional company (although I would argue that it already has), and its behaviour will start to match those of a traditional company’s behaviour. If you want to consider that as them “losing their way”, then yeah.

I wouldn’t call it “losing their way”, though. Circumstances changed, and the company changed, and that’s just the way she goes.

You describe a company as some self growing organism, whose direction is pre-destined or determined from outside.
It isn't.
The Apple board has chosen to go for maximum profits whereas Steve urged for the best products (stay lean, stay humble, stay angry...)
But after he died, all decisions were going in the other direction. Money, wealth, greed became the core values. Defending market share instead of attacking with groundbreaking new categories. Because it's easier money. Steve called for disruptive innovation - even if that would cannibalize existing products. Apple has neither the courage nor the veign anymore. It has run into blockades because of its massive scale - Steve would have detested scale to become an impeding factor and never allowed it to be. He would hate refurb designs, retrogrades to fill the streets.
He would have kicked Joni's ass for new designs, to solve the bezel problem well before that was virtually impossible. He would have kicked Eddy's ass to have enough content deals by now. He would have kicked Phil's ass to bring out a multitouch Mac by now.
Tim goes for compromises to save ass and only looks at scale.
So there are thousands of patents, never to be implemented because if scaling restrictions, purely defensive- only to avoid other companies to innovate.
That's not organic development but purely negative, near-monopolist conduit.
There are numerous alternatives that could have been chosen, contrary to what you say there are many dimensions in which you can grow a company.
They could have split off or sold off the computer branch with smaller market, its own targets to its own endeavours and its your own innovation - instead of declaring it practically dead with the lunatic postPC era (a falsification that should be the end of every regular IT CEO)
Then that wouldn't have fallen behind in a way that can't be repaired.
They could have concentrated on their core business instead of trying to capture the health market, trying to capture the television markets, trying to capture the automated car market which trying to capture the health market mostly are embarrassing failures yet. But money seems to be the answer to anything.
Just like Google Facebook Amazon all with similar PR agencies and spin doctors to cover up failing endeavors, mismanagement.
Because who cares if you can't get rid of your money anyway.

 

[Solomani]

It's more like $154 billion in cash net of debt, as of the end of this last quarter. That's obviously still a huge cash pile. But Apple's cash net of debt hasn't been growing all that fast in recent years. It's only $4 billion more than it was 9 quarters ago.

Minus a couple billion paid to settle lawsuits.

 

[I7guy]

Minus a couple billion paid to settle lawsuits.

A couple of billion here and there.

 

[Apple Corps]

There are other ways to be constrained, such as the number of qualified personnel you can hire. This, I believe, is their bottleneck, not money or any other factor. That at any one time, they have only so many people they can deploy to work on only so many products at any one time.

Than why can Amazon and SONY and others have the ability to bring 4k streaming devices to market already? It is sounding more and more like an apologist's perspective.


They are not mutually exclusive.

The 4K Apple TV is likely waiting for a suitable skinny cable bundle to complement it, and Apple probably still can't get the right deal it wants from the cable companies, so they would rather not release it rather than release it without the accompanying bundles.

Than why has Eddie Cue not delivered on the content negotiations - that is his job? Do you have any actual high level managerial or executive experience? In the real world of business leadership those "excuses" would result in someone else being assigned to get it done.

Services has always been Apple's weak spot. Just the consequence of their business model.

What business "model" would that be a consequence of? Cook has been touting their service improvements and importance.


It may well be the one that Apple has decided to embark on.

Or it may be a result of limited vision and poor execution....

 

[Abazigal]

@Apple Corps - Appreciate if you don't type your responses in the quoted comments in future, they make it virtually impossible for me to quote and respond to.

Than why can Amazon and SONY and others have the ability to bring 4k streaming devices to market already? It is sounding more and more like an apologist's perspective.

They can, there just isn't much need to at the moment when 4k content is still in the nascent stage.

Than why has Eddie Cue not delivered on the content negotiations - that is his job? Do you have any actual high level managerial or executive experience? In the real world of business leadership those "excuses" would result in someone else being assigned to get it done.

Because the cable companies are playing ball and giving Apple access to the skinny bundle they want. This isn't an excuse for Apple, just an indicator of the current state of the market.

As far as I can see, no other company has done this either. Even Google's Youtube TV came without a significant amount of content just to get the price down.

That's the difference between Apple and other companies. Apple doesn't want to release a cable bundle they are not happy with, while other companies decide to throw out whatever deal they were able to make. At the end of the day, Apple probably believes that they can afford to wait in this regard, and wait they shall.

What business "model" would that be a consequence of? Cook has been touting their service improvements and importance.

https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-crossroads/

Services exist to sell Apple products, so by their very nature, Apple's services, and the teams that work on them, will never be the most important people in the company, and their development will be constrained by the culture of Apple itself.

 

[Apple Corps]

Whoa - you previously posted "There are other ways to be constrained, such as the number of qualified personnel you can hire. This, I believe, is their bottleneck, not money or any other factor." Now you are shifting your argument to "They can, there just isn't much need to at the moment when 4k content is still in the nascent stage."

Hmmmmm - slippery but not slippery enough.

I ask my question again - do you have any real world significant level managerial / executive experience or are you just....?

BTW - there is 4k streaming content available via streaming - that is not as valid a position as it was a year ago.