Apple earnings preview: From cuddly underdog to Evil Empire?

14 years ago

“‘When Apple, Inc. was the soft cuddly underdog, everyone loved them and rooted for the company’s success and, just like when the Boston Red Sox finally won the World Series, it was easy to be an AAPL fan as the company triumphed,’ suggests Paul McWilliams, who offers a bullish review of the stock prior to its earnings release after the market [today],” Steven Halpern reports for BloggingStocks.

MacDailyNews Take: Everyone most certainly did not love Apple, nor did they root for the company’s success. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Halpern reports, “The technology specialist and editor of Next Inning newsletter explains, ‘However, now that AAPL has won a position near the top of the world in both its markets and for the valuation awarded by the stock market, everything AAPL does is viewed with new and critical scrutiny… Under Jobs’ leadership, AAPL has created new markets that have been wildly embraced by consumers and, as a result, driven AAPL to where it is now one of the most highly valued companies in the world, more highly valued even than its old arch enemy, MSFT. While we could blame AAPL’s recent decline on what the press has determined is a bad antenna design on its new iPhone 4 and, in doing so, we most certainly wouldn’t be wrong, isolating only on that would be a mistake. What’s happening in the larger picture is AAPL has moved from being the cuddly underdog to become the new ‘Evil Empire,’ a title it has ironically taken from its old nemesis, MSFT. Leading an ‘Evil Empire’ is a new role for Jobs and one I’m sure will teach him some new lessons.'”

Halpern reports that McWilliams wrote, ‘Setting aside emotions for now, I continue to believe AAPL merits a higher price than we saw at its last 52-week high. Again, I don’t know that the market will see things this way and, at least in the near-term, I think emotions will be more important than numbers. However, in the longer term I think numbers will win.'”