“Apple shares have been pummeled lately amid reports of slowing iPhone sales, but the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock showed confidence in the consumer electronics giant by adding shares to its portfolio,” James Detar reports for Investor’s Business Daily.
“BlackRock said in a filing Monday that it owned 315.4 million shares of Apple, or 5.7% of total equity, at the end of the fourth quarter,” Detar reports. “That’s up from about 217.1 million shares or 3.9%, that the investment firm owned at the end of the third quarter, MarketWatch said, citing FactSet data.”
“Apple is set to report fiscal first-quarter earnings results after the market close on Tuesday,” Detar reports. “A consensus of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters calls for the Cupertino, Calif.-based company to report a 5.6% increase in earnings per share to $3.23 on a 2.7% rise in revenue to $76.6 billion. The company has topped quarterly earnings estimates for eight quarters in a row.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Blackrock added just about 100 million more Apple shares. Hey, if you’re gonna back up the truck, back up the damn truck!
SEE ALSO:
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Apple Q116 earnings preview – January 25, 2016
What to look for in Apple’s earnings report tomorrow – January 25, 2016
Apple to release Q116 earnings, webcast live conference call on January 26th – January 22, 2016
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
So BlackRock is behind all the recent trash talk.
We all knew it was someone big.
Yo, SEC, throw ’em in jail.
On Wall Street they don’t even bother to hide the smoking guns. The Marshal, the Sheriff, the Deputy, and Chester are all in on the shenanigans.
Bad Day at Black Rock.
NOT.
Susan L. Wagner – Co-founder and Director of BlackRock is on the Apple board.
Shh!
(Brought to you by Carl’s jr.)
I wonder if Goldman Sachs is also accumulating shares, with former Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer on its Board.
That’s some mighty rancid fish in the air!
That’s a huge insider buy.
IF there is an SEC investigation (and given the SEC’s pattern over the last two decades there won’t be) BlackRock will do two things: 1) attempt to show that Wagner is firewalled from all decisions and internal analyses with regard to Apple, and 2) show that BlackRock has been doing significant analyses on AAPL and Apple for many, many months and something in the last two or three days in the analyses they have routinely been doing has radically changed or some significant threshold has been crossed.
Even if there has been direct insider information passed, I don’t expect the SEC to find proof of it or prosecute.