Apple's Stock Price Reaches All-Time High Above $180 After Warren Buffett Praises iPhone Maker

[Chupa Chupa]

iPhone sales weren’t down. Q1 2017 had an extra week. Adjusted for that sales were up.

Since when do fabricated and over-inflated Wall Street predictions count? So people can claim disappointment when Apple misses their made-up numbers?

Oh I don't know. Since when do Apple's conservative, easy to bust, estimates count? It's all a "beat the estimates" game. But ultimately, yes, it's what Wall Street wants to see as far as AAPL (the stock) goes.

And you can say sales were up if you want. If wishes were horses and all that. The rest of use deal in actual numbers, not fantasy "what if" scenarios once the quarter is in the books.

But all of this deflects from what I was trying to point out to you that sales and revenue are not directly connected -- that is actual sales that people spent money on rather than the ones conjured up in your head and not reflected as actual revenue in Apple's books.

Don't be so defensive. Apple's worst quarter is better than many companies best. That is why Buffet has such a big bet on it. He understands the long term situation, that's how he invests. He and everyone else recognize Apple has some adjustments to make with the X, just as it did with the original iPad Pros. It'll get worked out. But last quarter was not stellar. Great, but not what was expected.

 

[krause734]

An iPhone is a computer. A very fast and powerful computer. It runs Basic programs (several in the App store) far faster than an Apple II, an original IBM PC-XT, or even a large DEC mainframe. For another user programmable computer, you can run Swift in an iPad Playground... often faster than a IBM 360 or even Cray XMP supercomputer could run the equivalent Fortran code.

All the rest is eye-candy.

What writes the code for the iPhone? Apple is losing it's focus on what makes it great: computers and software.

 

[Cesar Battistini]

What writes the code for the iPhone? Apple is losing it's focus on what makes it great: computers and software.

Very soon an iPad could be used for coding.
The future is headed in that direction.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Dividend or buyback, Apple should do something with its cash that it is bringing back from overseas. And I believe that the longer it keeps that cash around, the more likely it is for Apple spend it in a way Apple has not done in the past. I'm talking about acquiring another large company or getting into a new business model (like video content creation, or car manufacturing).

We've probably had this conversation in the past but I am totally with you on those hopes and fears. The question is far more urgent now than it's been in the past.

 

[Karma*Police]

The greatest investor of all time now holds almost 166M shares ($28B at current value) of the best company in the world. This is Berkshire's LARGEST marketable securities holding. Gives you a sense how much Buffett likes the business and Tim Cook (besides him saying it all the time).

By the way, this is old information as we knew Buffett added over 30M shares when the 13F was released almost 2 weeks ago. He owned over 130M shares for the last year.

Not surprising. AAPL is a great value play compared to most companies out there which is exactly what WB likes... Apple is a cash generating machine. If he knew more about tech, he'd probably be buying FB and GOOGL as well. Both look very attractive... especially FB... negative sentiment while fundamentals remain really strong means it's probably a good time to buy.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Isn’t it wild that the value of Apple has swung by $100 billion within a month?

Why is Macrumors using that horrible old logo?

Definitely great news. Sucks no funds to invest this week and I KNEW it would rise up like crazy.

 

[jeremysteele]

His massive investments continue to show a lot of confidence in the stability of Apple. Good news overall.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Keep it going. My shares need to look fatter.

 

[SD449]

Why is this post got me wanting to buy their shares at an all time high?

I must be crazy...

 

[Baymowe335]

That's not going to happen to the world's most valuable publicly traded company. Tim Cook will retire some day, on his own terms. I am both a small AAPL stockholder and a consumer of Apple products. I use my Apple dividends to purchase any Apple products that I might want or need in a given year. I'm happy with both my stock valuation and my product purchases. If the products were lousy and people didn't want them (phones, MACs, accessories and services), the stock price would drop like a rock. Its at an all-time high which means Tim Cook will be getting a compensation bonus. "According to the (annual proxy statement) filing, Apple's CEO Tim Cook received total compensation of $12.8 million in 2017, which was 47 percent higher than the prior year. The compensation includes a $3.06 million base salary and a $9.33 million Non-Equity incentive plan compensation and $440 thousand of other compensation."-NASDAQ, Dec 28, 2017
Apple's board is obviously happy with Tim's work, he got a 47% raise.

His compensation is more than fair.

 

[LizKat]

Isn't it nice how people can manipulate the price of a stock using only words.

Yeah LOL but in the case of Apple if they've been badmouthing it perennially since I missed buying some more at $13.. they've been doin' it wrong if meaning to short the company into oblivion.

As a (very minor) shareholder and (very long-running) user of Apple gear, I'm just happy to keep laughing at those who keep banging on the gong of the Apple Death Knell Counter.

The ebook version of Richard Moss' Unbound/Kickstarter crowd-funded book The Secret History of Mac Gaming just came out. Of course it has bits of history about Apple itself and its computers enmeshed in the telling. I was laughing today being reminded about some of the Apple-created hardware that landed with a thud, either over design, execution, timing, price, or all four combined. The trick they took to heart was that it's ok to glance back at that stuff now and then and take lessons that may be useful going forward, but mostly it's about moving forward --by the inch or the lightyear-- in the design department, even as the assembly lines wrestle with something weeks from the launch of something else.

Yes after the spectacular success of Apple II there was that stellar failure of the Apple III... and eventually there was, um... iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad... and somewhere along the road before that in the 90s I did miss on that effort to scarf up some more AAPL at $13.

Anyway someone looks a bit silly today who maybe harped on how over the top the Lisa was and forgets what happened when the iPod came along. Or complained about the lack of more spark in the beige boxes after the SE30 and forgets the excitement of the candy colored iMacs and clamshell laptops. Or criticizes Cook and sticks the ghost of Steve Jobs on an unattainable pedestal and forgets that Josh Raskin, employee #31 and shunted off to a team in a corner when Jobs reluctantly allowed development on the Macintosh to proceed, was the guy who had actually designed the overarching ideas and intended purposes of the thing.

Cook's a way more than competent CEO of a vast team of talent in a vast stream of development and production. I'm fine with people coming up with strategies on how to manage their own piece of Appe's pie -- or figuring when to to say "I've had enough" and push away from their table. But I peg as foolish whoever raps that Apple Death Knell Counter a fat one now and again. They forget Apple's long tradition track record of uncannily spotting the next big thing every so often and managing to bring a highly polished execution of it to a very finicky market. I'm not buying the stock right now but the next time someone badmouths it enough to make a noticeable dent, I'll be in there trying for another two or three shares.

 

[Glideslope]

Yeah because shipments will decline so much in the next months and Apple will be doomed.
They make 90% of the profit in the industry!!! And as soon as they launch the Airpower and the new iphones the stocks will just continue to go up.

Witch stock should they buy? Google? Amazon? If Apple updates Siri it's bye Amazon.

And don't call me junior again please, my name is clearly stated here on the left.

Buy AMZN, Cesar.
[doublepost=1519769339][/doublepost]

I took a screenshot of your stupid post and will remind you later

Thank you. I appreciated that.
[doublepost=1519769682][/doublepost]

His... what?

I apologize. I misspoke. I meant with his recent 30 Million share purchase his largest portion of Berkshire is Apple.
[doublepost=1519770001][/doublepost]

From the same person who predicted a doom and gloom Q1, I’d say your predictions don’t have much weight.

Have you seen the guidance for Q2? Explain how sales can be down when Apple is guiding for a record quarter?

Q1 was an anomaly. Revenu was up in iPhone only from the insane price people paid for the X. Otherwise it would have been down for iPhone. Q2 guidance was given at the Q1 call. If you would have read the transcript you would better understand my point. Warren Buffet says things are great at Apple days after his buys 31 Million shares. Come on, are you really that uninformed?

 

[alexgowers]

I can't help but feel this praise is some form of insider trading thing. Apple deserve such a high stock price but not for the all good reasons.

 

[triton100]

Let me give you the same advice Buffett did when asked about dividends. Just sell a small piece of your AAPL holdings every year and take a long term capital gain (lower tax rate, still get some cash every year). The beauty of using the money for buybacks is you can decide to pay your capital gains tax if you want a little extra cash and you're not forced into being taxed on a dividend.

The buyback also reduces share count, increases EPS, and ultimately makes your shares more valuable, assuming the stock is undervalued (which Apple and I believe is the case). Apple's buyback has been very successful. Their average price is something insane like $120/share.

How much is capital gains in the US? Does it go down the longer you leave it? In the Uk it’s the same 20% for however long you have it.

 

[Rojaaemon]

There certainly is a great deal of expertise here at MR.

Clearly, Apple should raise their price/earnings ratio. If Apple's P/E (17.51) were raised to match Amazon's P/E (332) then Apple would be worth $3,393 per share!

C'mon Tim! Make it happen!

 

[IJ Reilly]

How much is capital gains in the US? Does it go down the longer you leave it? In the Uk it’s the same 20% for however long you have it.

The long term capital gains rate in the U.S. (for investments held at least a year) is 10% in most cases. The short term rate starts at 15%.

 

[69650]

Wall Street must be making a fortune from the pump & dump merry-go-round of Apple stock. There is no logical reason for the stock to have risen 20%. iPhone X sales are still going to be well below expectations this quarter and I don’t see any evidence of the so called super-cycle. Give it a few weeks/months and the stock will no doubt fall back again.
[doublepost=1519784139][/doublepost]

As a shareholder since 1996 I want both. At this point if I was to sell any of my stock over 99% of the proceeds would be taxable as capital gain. Dividends allow actually using the stock appreciation without selling stock.

In other words you want to be greedy. You must have made a decent profit on your stock but heaven forbid you should pay any tax on that gain.
[doublepost=1519784482][/doublepost]

Isn't it nice how people can manipulate the price of a stock using only words.

Apple stock is the gift that keeps giving. It makes the rich get even richer and adds nothing to society as a whole.

 

[wozmatic]

As a shareholder, I don't want dividends. I want them to buyback as much stock as they can and slowly raise the dividend, maybe 10% at a time. The stock is tremendously undervalued.

Berkshire shareholders recently voted on a dividend proposal. 47:1 it was voted "NO" to a dividend. Dividends are not always the best way to deploy capital. I certainly don't want to pay the tax.

Buybacks reduce share count, increase EPS, reduce dividend obligations, and avoid taxes. However, buybacks make sense at once price and don't make sense at another. I think Apple's buyback would make sense even at all time highs. Buffett agrees and he's said so.

This guy stocks

 

[Baymowe335]

How much is capital gains in the US? Does it go down the longer you leave it? In the Uk it’s the same 20% for however long you have it.

Depends. Either 15% or 20% depending on your tax bracket to long term gains. Short term gains are treated as ordinary income and subject to your (likely) higher personal rate up to 39.6%.

 

[BuddyTronic]

Wow ... during the time you wrote this response, you could have been tracking down more stocks to purchase or maybe you are paid to write these responses. Keep up the good work though, folks like you need to continue to convince "regular" folks that they too "have a chance", that's how you control the masses.

Muahaha!

Actually, I just responded instead of ignoring. There is so much to ignore that every once in a while I do feel compelled to let it rip and balance out or try to correct what I see as incorrect. If I read things that I disagree with, I want to correct it

Perhaps I shouldn’t if it is not appreciated.

Check my past posts since c2007 or so on macrumours and you’ll see just how right I’ve been over the years. I’m no paid shill, but that’s interesting if you feel that way.

Anyway I hope you learn something.
[doublepost=1519788675][/doublepost]

Wow ... during the time you wrote this response, you could have been tracking down more stocks to purchase or maybe you are paid to write these responses. Keep up the good work though, folks like you need to continue to convince "regular" folks that they too "have a chance", that's how you control the masses.

Also - I mainly have AAPL. It’s 98% of my portfolio. I look, but can’t justify buying other stocks.

I do regret not buying GOOGL for IPO $85. Back then I respected my bro-in-law stock brokers “advice”. Bah!

I missed the boat on AMZN. Hated the fundamentals - still do! No regrets.

Priceline was gonna buy because James T Kirk! Missed it. No regrets.

I hold INTC. Good divs, but zero growth for 15 years! Regret that!

I hold eBay and PayPal. Don’t care

The rest is aapl.


I am not paid to write anything. But AAPL is my life savings, and this is like my hobby

 

[Baymowe335]

Oh I don't know. Since when do Apple's conservative, easy to bust, estimates count? It's all a "beat the estimates" game. But ultimately, yes, it's what Wall Street wants to see as far as AAPL (the stock) goes.

And you can say sales were up if you want. If wishes were horses and all that. The rest of use deal in actual numbers, not fantasy "what if" scenarios once the quarter is in the books.

But all of this deflects from what I was trying to point out to you that sales and revenue are not directly connected -- that is actual sales that people spent money on rather than the ones conjured up in your head and not reflected as actual revenue in Apple's books.

Don't be so defensive. Apple's worst quarter is better than many companies best. That is why Buffet has such a big bet on it. He understands the long term situation, that's how he invests. He and everyone else recognize Apple has some adjustments to make with the X, just as it did with the original iPad Pros. It'll get worked out. But last quarter was not stellar. Great, but not what was expected.

Last quarter was stellar for anyone who understands the numbers and the reality. They sold 83M iPhones when normalized for the 14 week quarter last year. Unit sales for iPhone were the only perceived “disappointment” which Apple doesn’t even guide for.

They beat the high end of guidance, grew top and bottom lines 13% y/y, iPhone revenue up 17% y/y, 240m paid subscribers, up 30m in just 90 days, sold the most Watches ever, most wearables ever, killed it in China, increased ASP almost $100 on iPhone, and guided for nearly 20% top line growth over last year.

The only disappointments were based on unrealistic analyst guesses that were never reality.

This was a unique quarter anyway because the iPhone X being released only 57 days in the quarter obviously detracted from iPhone 8 sales. The waiting for X combined with short supply were definitely factors. I think Apple will be more “ready” with 3 phones available by Oct 1 this year. We will see.

You can’t complain about this 90 day period and any disappointment can easily be explained. Again, more phones when adjusted for the extra week. That matters. The $100 ASP increase matters too. If you told me as an investor that Apple will never sell more than 80M phones in a quarter but will raise ASP another $100, sign me up.

 

[BuddyTronic]

Oh I don't know. Since when do Apple's conservative, easy to bust, estimates count? It's all a "beat the estimates" game. But ultimately, yes, it's what Wall Street wants to see as far as AAPL (the stock) goes.

And you can say sales were up if you want. If wishes were horses and all that. The rest of use deal in actual numbers, not fantasy "what if" scenarios once the quarter is in the books.

But all of this deflects from what I was trying to point out to you that sales and revenue are not directly connected -- that is actual sales that people spent money on rather than the ones conjured up in your head and not reflected as actual revenue in Apple's books.

Don't be so defensive. Apple's worst quarter is better than many companies best. That is why Buffet has such a big bet on it. He understands the long term situation, that's how he invests. He and everyone else recognize Apple has some adjustments to make with the X, just as it did with the original iPad Pros. It'll get worked out. But last quarter was not stellar. Great, but not what was expected.

Actually last quarter was stellar IMHO.

 

[Baymowe335]

Sales and revenue are not necessarily connected. We saw that last quarter where iPhone SALES were down but REVENUE up thanks to the iPhone X's high price point. Another recent example of this is the original iPad Pro 9.7. Unit sales of that device were flat but they were priced about $100 more than its predecessor. So iPad revenue increased even as sales were flat.

While Apple is always conservative with its guidance and consistently beats it, it's 2Q guidance is disappointing. It certainly underwhelmed short term Wall St holders which were looking for a minimum of $65b in revenue with help from iPhone X. It's clear from the actions of Apple suppliers like Samsung that the X is not meeting Apple's sales expectations otherwise Samsung wouldn't be trying to offload the panels it reserved for Apple.

Don’t tell me you are using Nikkei as a source. Please. They have been consistently wrong, including the fake news they reported on iPhone 7 and iPhone X prior to the Q1 report. ASP debunked that story completely.

Attempts to try to understand Apple’s supply chain are almost always wrong. If you follow the stock, you know this.

For Q2, they guided for $62B, which they probably will beat. $65B is again, analyst nonsense. $62B would represent a 17% increase y/y and they’ll probably beat it by some margin, making it more like 20%. Do you know how insane 20% growth is for a company of Apple’s size on a revenue base of over $50B? We are talking about INCREASING sales by almost $10B in 90 days. $10B is only $2B less than DISNEY’s total revenue in Q417. Disney! It’s almost as much revenue as Netflix made in all of 2017.

Do you know how insane that is? This company is absolutely treated unfairly with unrealistic expectations. Meanwhile, Netflix trades at 200 times earnings and Tesla is constantly given a pass for losing more and more money. Value takes time to play out.

 

[BuddyTronic]

There certainly is a great deal of expertise here at MR.

Clearly, Apple should raise their price/earnings ratio. If Apple's P/E (17.51) were raised to match Amazon's P/E (332) then Apple would be worth $3,393 per share!

C'mon Tim! Make it happen!

This type of comparison is a very good idea to get insular minds thinking! It’s the obvious point that I always tell anyone who is not bullish for AAPL and telling me stuff about other stocks

 

[Baymowe335]

AMZN is a great company, but I think the current valuation is approaching or already a bubble. I couldn’t sleep if I owned enough to matter to me.