“Let’s ignore the latest stock-market gyrations that have sent Apple’s share price spinning, and focus instead on some of the company’s fundamentals,” Bob Evans writes for Forbes.
“Just 26 months ago, Steve Jobs joined Apple’s quarterly earnings call to commemorate the company’s first $20-billion quarter,” Evans writes. “And next month, little more than 2 years after what was then a momentous occasion, Apple will announce its first $50-billion quarter!”
Evans writes, “The folks over at statista.com have put together an eye-popping graphic that compares Apple’s fiscal-2012 profits with those of the top 5 companies in various industries. Not just Apple versus a single category leader, but Apple versus the top 5 companies in various industries.”
You will find more statistics at Statista
Evans writes, “The tech world is moving inexorably toward new approaches to optimizing the power of hardware and software together, and Apple’s astonishing success on so many levels offers powerful and enduring proof that will be very difficult—if not impossible—to refute.”
Read more in the full article here.
Good to see some common sense. All I can make out of this is that someone is making a huge amount of money riding AAPL up and down…and they’re getting away with it! It’s amazing how unfounded rumors, or even thoughts of hints of rumors can be placed, with excellent timing, and cause the uninitiated to jump (and ask how high). We know that Apple is subject to periods of instability, but even that settles down when fundamentals are just too solid to cause the jitters. Patience will be rewarded.
Rich has just defined FUD.
After constant demands and whining from Wall Street analysts seeking a fast buck for no effort, Apple caved in and started to pay a dividend. The day that happened, the stock qualified to be added to a number of mutual funds. And that the day that happened, the stock’s behavior suddenly was influenced less by its fundamentals, as any stock should be, and more by the whims of fund managers, who are often afraid of their own shadow.
So even though Apple continues to show exemplary sales and earnings growth, what you see on its stock chart has increasingly less correlation with what should be happening. The company’s stock is now subject to fears over the fiscal cliff, “window dressing,” the actions by fund managers late in the year to make their funds appear to have performed better than they actually did, FUD planted by competitors, haters, short sellers and hedge funds, negative hype by websites desperately whoring for clicks and resulting investor panic.
Put all that aside and you still have a company that is growing at a tremendous rate, is highly profitable, blessed with a mountain of cash, no debt, great products and market leadership. Sadly, this is lost amid the din of noise masquerading as facts, and actions taken by fund managers that impact the stock’s short-term performance.
We live in a strange world indeed.
All the small investor can do is to be patient, keep your seatbelt loosely fastened about your waist and ride out the turbulence while some contents may shift while in flight. In the long run, a stock’s earnings and earnings growth will eventually correlate with its price. Artificially induced volatility is agonizing for any investor. But so long as the fundamentals of a good and growing company remain intact, patience is the only way to ride out the storm.
Now if you will kindly excuse me, I have to breathe into a paper bag, and ignore the Malice in Blunderland world of Wall $treet.
I see no difference whatsoever in how Apple performs before and after announcing a dividend. Nothing new happening here.
This is exactly right. Forget about all the religious OS/platform wars and look at who is actually making REAL money in mobile: Apple and Samsung and, ugh, well, hmm, that’s about it.
Google’s long-term strategy is nebulous at best, but they do have a war chest to fritter away for several years.
Microsoft is simply non-existant in the mobile space but they also have a sugar-daddy fund to flush away, at least for now.
Amazon, however, has no profits, strategy or war chest–they could evaporate in a Seattle minute.
Oh yea, and don’t forget about >$100 billion in the bank.
Yes. Apple’s “cash in the bank” (by itself) is worth more than the ENTIRE company just four years ago. That’s amazing…
That cash is also what allows Apple to take immense risks (that no one else is willing to take). It’s self insurance, so that Apple does not need to “bet the farm” on creating the Next Big Thing, because creating iPhone and iPad were a big risks. And “iTV” is a big risk.
Apple is great because it takes risks while everyone else waits and copies. That cash is the mitigator of risk and the enabler of creativity. All the people who want Apple to “give it away” to shareholders are shortsighted fools.
Yes, but … but … The sky is falling!
The crap that continues to make the news is that in 2014 or 2016 someone is going to take a piece of Apple’s market share or some other dribble.
My family and I took the financial hit from people selling to get this years tax rate. January 1st this tax crap will be past. What will they think of using next? In the end there will be only one and that will be Apple for a decade or two. Only true artificial intelligence or some other innovation that Apple doesn’t own will take Apple from that number one spot.
Have you all figured out yet that when all the tech (iPhones, iPads, iPods, Macs, Apple TV, …) is counted up that Apple is the World’s Largest Computer/Device Manufacturer and is growing faster than ALL the rest!
One Word……..
AMAZING
Reading broadly across the tech and financial news, the best comment I’ve observed so far:
“I despair for my species. I pray the Mayans had it right.”
After constant demands and whining from Wall Street analysts seeking a fast buck for no effort, Apple caved in and started to pay a dividend. The day that happened, the stock qualified to be added to a number of mutual funds. And that the day that happened, the stock’s behavior suddenly was influenced less by its fundamentals, as any stock should be, and more by the whims of fund managers, who are often afraid of their own shadow.
So even though Apple continues to show exemplary sales and earnings growth, what you see on its stock chart has increasingly less correlation with what should be happening. The company’s stock is now subject to fears over the fiscal cliff, “window dressing,” the actions by fund managers late in the year to make their funds appear to have performed better than they actually did, FUD planted by competitors, haters, short sellers and hedge funds, negative hype by websites desperately whoring for clicks and resulting investor panic.
Put all that aside and you still have a company that is growing at a tremendous rate, is highly profitable, blessed with a mountain of cash, no debt, great products and market leadership. Sadly, this is lost amid the din of noise masquerading as facts, and actions taken by fund managers that impact the stock’s short-term performance.
We live in a strange world indeed.
All the small investor can do is to be patient, keep your seatbelt loosely fastened about your waist and ride out the turbulence while some contents may shift while in flight. In the long run, a stock’s earnings and earnings growth will eventually correlate with its price. Artificially induced volatility is agonizing for any investor. But so long as the fundamentals of a good and growing company remain intact, patience is the only way to ride out the storm.
Now if you will kindly excuse me, I have to breathe into a paper bag, and ignore the Malice in Blunderland world of Wall $treet.
Brian – totally agree, but didn’t you just say that?
Or to put this in another way…
Apple profited almost as much as… Microsoft, Google, eBay, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Nokia, Samsung, HTC, and RIM combined.
And profited more than… Dell, Intel, ASUS, Acer, IBM, HP, Lenovo, Walt Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, Comcast, and Viacom combined.
Fundamentals don’t matter. What’s killing AAPL is, in this order, (1) an ineffectual leader, (2) pursuing the fast buck with gadgets sold to fickle consumers and abandoning the greatest opportunity in tech history – converting corporate and government markets to the Mac that the company doesn’t make any more, and (3) recent, frequent blunders that renders the company into the world of ordinary. You won’t see $700 again – probably won’t see $600. The ride is over. Exit to your left.
Except none of that is true. You are just a patsy and have been manipulated to think that way for someone else’s gain. Good job advertising that to the world.
Translation: I’m upset that Apple doesn’t make a Mac for me, so I’m going to call ‘failure’ for the entire company despite the ridiculously stellar numbers.
Sheesh!
avoid giving ppeterson oxygen
or then again, perhaps he’s anaerobic.