“Apple chief Tim Cook appeared on Mad Money last night for a lengthy interview with Jim ‘El Capitan’ Cramer, but his interview did nothing to dissuade me from my fundamental short thesis for the stock,” Doug Kass writes for TheStreet. “‘El Capitan’ asked hard-hitting questions last night that Apple’s CEO mostly whiffed at by delivering rather vague, glittering generalities and standard responses.”
“Of course, good investing stories don’t need to be sold — not by Cook, and not by Carl Icahn or any other current or former large Apple investor,” Kass writes. “And while iconic stocks die hard, paradigm-shifting businesspeople like late Apple CEO Steve Jobs are next to impossible to replace. We all remember Jobs, and one of last night’s messages to me was that Cook is no Jobs.”
“The current Apple CEO emphasized a long-term, bright outlook for Apple — but frankly, I’ve never heard a top manager not say that his or her company’s intermediate or long-term outlook looked bright,” Kass writes. “Nothing I heard changed my view that Apple’s product-upgrade cycle will now elongate after the unprecedented success of the iPhone 6. That was likely Apple’s last important product upgrade, and the company seems unlikely to ever repeat that success.”
MacDailyNews Take: iCal’ed.
“I see Apple’s competition as mounting in intensity — and representing a threat to sales, pricing, profits and margins,” Kass writes. “Stated simply, I don’t see any present innovation or prospective creativity at Apple that will bring Cook’s statements to reality for either the iPhone or the Apple Watch.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: And Steve Jobs was no Tim Cook.
Doug Kass always pops up popping off when Apple is down. He’s an Apple short. And a fomenter. And nothing more.
The company faces a much more difficult business landscape, the competition is escalating, and that’s going to challenge profitability over the next couple of years. — Doug Kass of Apple Inc., January 30, 2013
36 months later, after banking over a hundred billion dollars in profits since Kass’ statement, Apple reaped a single quarter profit of $18.4 billion, the largest ever recorded by a single public corporation. This past quarter, Apple’s “Big Miss,” the company posted revenue of $50.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $10.5 billion. Those are each “billion” with a “b.” Compare those results to any other company on earth.
SEE ALSO:
Doug Kass: I made a mistake on Apple – March 7, 2013
Doug Kass shows how easy it is to manipulate shares of Apple – February 27, 2013
Can the U.S. SEC prosecute Doug Kass over Apple stock split rumor? – February 27, 2013
Doug Kass: Apple to announce stock split on Wednesday – February 26, 2013
Doug Kass: Apple ‘is dead’ – January 30, 2013