“Maybe it’s not so bad that Apple stops regularly reporting iPhone, iPad and Mac unit sales data—if the company replaces it with something better,” David Marino-Nachison reports for Barron’s. “Needham analyst Laura Martin suggested that Thursday as she cut her price target on the tech giant’s shares to $200, below FactSet’s roughly $219 average, from $260. (She still has a Buy rating on the stock, however.)”
“Her suggestion: If Apple must taketh away… it should giveth back, too,” Marino-Nachison reports. “‘We support Apple’s decision to stop ‘providing unit sales data for iPhone, iPad and Mac’ because we believe that it tethers Apple’s valuation to its hardware roots of the past, not the future,’ Martin wrote. ‘We believe Apple is an ‘ecosystem company’ and that valuation should be based on (and we would like to see more metrics about: unique user growth; trends in churn rates (i.e., average life-span) and trends in average lifetime revenue per user.'”
Marino-Nachison reports, “And Barron’s Jack Hough, wrote: “If Apple can get investors to focus less on how its quarterly iPhone volumes compare with guesses, and more on bottom-line results, it could be viewed less as a hit-or-miss gadget maker and more as a digital staple seller.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s competitors do not regularly report quarterly smartphone, tablet, or personal computer unit sales, either.
SEE ALSO:
Apple rams their message home: Think ‘Apple as a Service’ – November 2, 2018
Investors bristle as Apple occludes iPhone unit sales data – November 2, 2018
Apple’s decision to stop reporting unit sales of iPhones, Macs, and iPads is a ‘defining moment’ – November 2, 2018
Apple to stop reporting iPhone, Mac, and iPad quarterly unit sales – November 1, 2018
Apple tumbles 7% after reporting record-breaking quarterly earnings – November 1, 2018
Apple beats Street with another record-breaking quarter – November 1, 2018
Its the best decision.. but it will take a bit of time for the panic oriented market to adapt to it.
Mind you sales figures and margins per catagory will still be reported.
Yes, it will take time. Years I bet.
This time 2019 I predict AAPL wont be anywhere near 2018’s high. Not even close.
Another serious leg down today. Apple share holders must be pretty used to $4-$5 daily drops. Apple has fallen 35% and there is no sign whatsoever that the drop is over.
Now, it will take me almost 30 years of dividend payments to recover what my Apple shares have lost in the past 6 weeks.
30 years!
I’m sure Tim Cook is proud, very very proud of his accomplishments.
NO IT IS NOT THE BEST DECISION FOR INVESTORS.
Not only does this leave the investor blind to how rapidly changing market conditions may be affecting Apple, it also signals that Apple leadership is in it for themselves.
Apple invites FUD when it is too secretive. Maybe that’s good for MDN and manipulators but it increases volatility and directly harms long term stockholders.
All publicly traded companies need to be held to account. That means honesty and transparency.
Just stop with the brainless cheerleading already.
Other device manufacturers dont.. why pick on Apple..
Also, Qualcomm won’t know how how many iPhones are no longer using their chipset.
I’ll just leave this here, from an article that explains how changes at Apple are historically received. This most recent change will be no different.
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The Path to Enlightenment
In the past, when Apple entered a major transition, investor optimism initially declined, then stabilized, then improved. This process takes about a year to unfold and has four distinct phases:
News: November 1 – The company announced that starting with the Dec-18 quarter, it will no longer report unit sales figures for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Knee-jerk: We’re currently in the knee-jerk phase. Shares of AAPL are down ~20% since the news was announced on Nov. 1. The pull back was also driven by the broader market downturn, along with negative data points out of Apple’s supply chain related to iPhone demand. We expect the knee-jerk phase to last until early Feb. 2019 when the company reports Dec-18 quarterly earnings.
Indifference: After Dec-18 results, we expect investors’ concerns to ease to indifference. Revenue, earnings, and margins will likely be in-line with expectations, a reassuring sign that the iPhone franchise is intact despite the more limited reporting metrics. The indifference phase should linger until Apple reports its Sep-19 quarter in Oct. 2019. Typically, investors will want to see four quarters of stability in order to rule out all possible effects of seasonality before beginning to embrace a new reality.
Enlightenment: Late in 2019 and beyond – Investors will slowly credit the company for results in 2019 that support the Apple as a Service paradigm. Rising investor confidence in a more predictable hardware business, additive Services, and new products should result in a higher multiple for shares of AAPL.
Yup.. 7% correction upwards is all it takes to be on par with the market!
Lets hope the market as a whole also get enlightened!