Steven Philips on Apple honors students with disabilities (music video) - 'He’d find a reason to deport them all!'
on IDC: Apple's iPhone shipments are setting records left and right - ' Dividing the next 4 quarters of forward earnings ($8.56) into today’s stock price ($286) yields 33.4 ISM. Roger you are a sweetheart. That’s exactly how earnings multiples should be calculated. A 33.4 ISM conveys to me that WS remains luke warm to Apple’s earnings power, which may explain why institutions are under weight AAPL. The hard part for investors is trying to forecast future earnings sentiment (described as a multiple). I think this may explain how PE multiples evolved to use trailing earnings vs future earnings. It’s simply easier, and results in concepts of good or bad. Different industries have historically different rates of revenue and earnings stability and growth. Growth rates in the auto industry are limited to replacements and very modest growth. The technology sector is constantly creating new product categories with rapid adoption (growth rates) until market saturation sets in. About that time new technologies create new capabilities and the cycle starts all over again. Tesla is following the cycle of a technology company. It has a high multiple because the market for EVs is immense, while the market for ICE’s is declining. Regardless of the sentiment towards Musk, Tesla is the world’s leader in EVs. It is the dominant player. Properly managed it will remain dominant until market saturation, warranting high multiples. The only threat to Tesla is the limited availability of battery rare earths, which is controlled by China. Rare earths aren’t really that rare. Processing plants for these materials are. Instead of subsidizing EV sales, we should be subsidizing rare earth processing plant construction. Bring the cost of batteries down and the cost of the vehicle will follow. But that’s a whole other topic. Good for you Roger. You get it.'
on Apple at $286.19: Another day, another record close - 'In the market cap race NVIDIA is at $4.41 trillion. Apple is closing in on the top spot at $4.23 trillion and Alphabet is approaching the $4 trillion club at $3.81 trillion. Gemini 3 has given the share price quite a boost and looking at today’s headlines OpenAI is feeling the heat from Alphabet’s success. The company spiked to new all-time highs on Friday. Is Alphabet delivering a better AI product?'
on Loop Capital raises its Apple target $10 to $325 - 'Hi, Daniel. That certainly is the reason for the precipitous drop in late March, but was Apple all that vulnerable? The US market would hardly have been touched, and China owes a lot of its existing strength to Apple’s perennial presence there. I.e., it was always an overblown reaction at best. And Apple had begun dropping 3 months sooner, having retraced back almost to $200/share by mid-March. People conveniently forget the previous ~$260/share ATH hit in December, ‘24, which is almost exactly a mere 10% growth over that number almost a year later. Same company, the only difference being the underlying profitability is no longer masked like it was for the last year. At 80+, we don’t buy but only sell, so we have an excuse for not moving in that incredible buying opportunity. What’s everyone else’s?'
on IDC: Apple's iPhone shipments are setting records left and right - 'Gregg, I posted this to one of your comments from Nov…Gregg, questions on your post on 11/22 regarding ISM. Using 18% EPS growth for this quarter and 13% for the following 3 quarters, gets me to $8.56 EPS reported in Jan 27. Dividing the next 4 quarters of forward earnings ($8.56) into today’s stock price ($286) yields 33.4 ISM. This doesn’t seem right to me given today’s PE is about 38.2. As in it seems there should be a bigger gap. Am I doing this right? Are my growth percentages reasonable or too low? Yahoo Finance has a forward PE of 34.13 or a forward eps of $8.37. Re-reading your post above – you mention current ISM. Is there such a thing as future ISM? Thanks in advance!'
on Suddenly, the Street doesn't care about Apple AI - 'I’ve noticed several things driven by ML on the iPhone. Don’t know how long they have been there but I felt that “Whoa. Amazing” feeling Apple sometimes gives when it surprises you. Inside their own apps. One is the ability to simply select a person in a photo and copy it. I know apps have done that but I was surprised it was just there in Photo. Second was how useful the writing tools are. I tend to be very informal and verbose when I write. Having it make my Keynote notes concise is a gamechanger for me. Click a button. Then do some light editing to fix any mistakes. Cuts my presentation time down close to 30% in a few cases. Finally, in CarPlay. My wife and I go to the same Cafe every Monday for lunch. when we now get in the car to drive their, Apple maps gives us the route, with any possible delays. Without me asking. It is not on my calendar. It just knows. I am sure there are more for me to discover.'
on Suddenly, the Street doesn't care about Apple AI - 'With respect, Apple -has had- an AI problem with Siri, which never performed to the expectations of Apple or its users. Now AI technology, specifically LLMs, have raised the expectations bar for Siri, and Apple -has to meet that-. Beyond Siri, I think the situation is much more fluid. Apple has laid good infrastructure for AI, particularly machine learning, for apps (including Apple’s own apps.) I’ve been a little disappointed we haven’t seen more significant (spelled ‘amazing’ 🙂 ) apps using machine learning so far. But what I think Wall St has finally realized is that many, probably most people will access AI services through an Apple device. The factoring of cloud AI and edge AI is likely to break in Apple’s favor, making use of the on-device features. So in that respect, I fully agree Wall St has missed Apple’s edge-based strategy.'
on Apple's Amar Subramanya has his work cut out for him - 'So Apple’s a total loser on AI and can’t keep or attract anyone good… but they’ve somehow managed to attract someone great, so maybe that means they’ll finally be able to attract someone good! Yeah, makes total sense. The insight of Mr. Marcus’s article can be distilled down to the only sentence that actually reveals anything: “And while it’s impossible to know for sure from the outside, it’s reasonable to assume…” Because of course everyone’s assumptions about Apple over the last year+ have been totally reliable.'
on Suddenly, the Street doesn't care about Apple AI - '“ Suddenly, the Street doesn’t care about Apple AI” I disagree. I believe the street sees that regarding AI, Apple has got all their ducks in order and all those ducks will be swimming out for all to see in the next 6 months. Some want to own Apple before that happens.'
on Loop Capital raises its Apple target $10 to $325 - 'Hi Joseph, The Tariff hit was so hard to calculate that fear triumphed over reason for quite a while. And if some how all of Apple’s products had ended up with 100% tariff’s then maybe the fear number was closer to the truth than the low Tariff effect we have had so far. Throw in the Google anti trust costing Apple its $20 billion then you could make an argument for an under $200 price. At least for the short term. Thankfully it was not what happened. And I may suggest that the China sales rebound might be part of a change in the government not restricting Apple purchases as much or the people not wanting to “cut off their nose to spite their face” when it comes to which phone they can and will want.'
on IDC: Apple's iPhone shipments are setting records left and right - 'Toss into that equation how Apple has been disciplined in not spending Capex on AI like a drunken sailor on shore leave after a 6 month deployment at sea, and there’s lots to like about this company moving forward.'
