David Emery on Blowback from Tim Cook's presence in Trump's China entourage - 'I personally differentiate “Cook with Trump in China” from “Cook with Trump at the White House”. The former is legitimate and I’d argue in the national interest. The latter is much more likely sucking up. That’s particularly true when Cook is at an event that is not directly coupled to Apple’s lines of business.'
on Evercore raises Apple target $35 to $365 - 'Morning, Bill. That would explain why Apple is suddenly hoarding cash and dropping its net cash zero approach: They need to fund a major increase in Mac production capacity, and they need to do it STAT….'
on Blowback from Tim Cook's presence in Trump's China entourage - 'Now that Ternus is taking over day to day operations this is exactly where Tim needs to be, if only to do damage control. When I worked in Asia I recall that lieutenants on both sides were always on edge during meetings like these. No telling what trouble the high level guys could cause.'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Speaking of our favorite fruit company flowing out sweet liquid gold, Apple quarterly dividends are finding their way into shareholder account coffers today!'
on Blowback from Tim Cook's presence in Trump's China entourage - 'I am uncomfortable with Tim’s appearance at Trump events. It’s queasy. Especially when he appears to obligingly do the “Trump Thumbs” in photo-shoots etc, as he did with the other CEO’s yesterday. It makes it look complicit and not distanced. So he appears hypocritical. What I do know, is that we don’t know jack. And what is for sure, is that often, he is on that plane or in that room because “the other side” wants him there. So Tim Apple may have been there because the Chinese trust him. Not because Trump trusts him. Jensen joined at the last minute after attempting to bail, but was on AF1 and in the photo-op like everyone else. He was there because everyone is concerned that Trump will sell the farm to Xi (and rat out South Korea) for some exchange he benefits from but which is disaster to the businesses and the regions stability, So maybe people from the Global side wanted these guys in the room to modulate issues. And he will extract concessions and favorable trading terms and conditions from both sides… he’s there to do business, not politics after all. But it don’t look nice. Not one bit. And a lot of people are rightly furious and questioning it. I have no issue with that.'
on Blowback from Tim Cook's presence in Trump's China entourage - 'I completely agree. Well put. Although I hate the fact that he is there with the president, he has no choice but to go, for the good of his company and shareholders. American politicians should be ashamed of themselves for squandering the lead they had and for not thinking of the good of the country.'
on Evercore raises Apple target $35 to $365 - 'I’m sure Eric does, but there are voices on Apple 3.0 just as good, maybe better, than most of those originating on WS.'
on Apple at $300: Why now? - 'Yes – I did a small sale at $298.80 on Wed while I was sleeping. Was pleasantly surprised when I awoke and saw the price had spiked os quickly'
on Blowback from Tim Cook's presence in Trump's China entourage - 'Yawn. It looks and reads like a cut-and-paste from any of the other “Apple and Tim Cook are the worst!!” opinion pieces over the last few years, rehashing the same tired points and ignoring of course the massive false equivalence in the behaviour of Tim Cook vs Elon Musk and the rest of the gang that hovers around Trump. That an ex Cabinet member, who obviously has a grasp of who Trump is and how he operates, refuses to acknowledge that it’s a command attendance for someone like Cook to attend events says it all. It’s completely laughable that someone who is as objectively intelligent as Robert Reich insists on pretending that Tim Cook and Apple are responsible for building China’s tech capacity, without at the very least pointing to successive generations of American political leaders from the local to the federal level completely squandering their lead and opportunity by doing all they could to dumb down public education and crush STEM training and opportunities. On the other hand, China’s leadership made it all a very long-term priority, decades ago, and continues to push as hard and fast on supporting and expanding it. Simply put, US leadership completely screwed up. And continues to. As have most of the other western nations. And the current guy in the White House is doing more damage more quickly than anyone before him.'
on Evercore raises Apple target $35 to $365 - 'It looks like this stock might have some legs. I’m interested to see if Erik Woodring has any kind of update forthcoming'
on Evercore raises Apple target $35 to $365 - 'Bill wrote: “And yet, no mention of upside to Mac sales for AI purposes” Daryanani has a lot to say about the Mac in those 105 pages, but I think you are right. Skimming through, I saw nothing about the AI developer run on Mac Minis.'
on Evercore raises Apple target $35 to $365 - 'And yet, no mention of upside to Mac sales for AI purposes, despite blow-out sales last quarter and inability to keep up with AI-related demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio. And this occurred before Apple has even started trying to capitalize on this opportunity. Seems to me that’s an additional revenue Mac opportunity worth tens of billions of dollars per year near- to medium-term.'
on Apple at $300: Why now? - '“My take: Cheers to the longs.” Love to know how many times you have said that now Philip!'
on Apple at $300: Why now? - 'Thanks Robert. My understanding is MSFT’s $150M cash investment and Office for Mac commitments were relevant factors in stabilizing and keeping AAPL out of bankruptcy. Regardless of use, MSFT’s cash would have been helpful with lenders and creditors. MSFT was perhaps more motivated by antitrust and/or lawsuit risk management vs goodwill, but I still shorthand addressing AAPL’s financial distress and bankruptcy risk as ‘bailout’. If AAPL weren’t near bankruptcy, ‘bailout’ would be inappropriate, but that’s what I always understood.'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'I just squeezed out a squirt amount limit sell order, good until cancelled, for 303. Let’s see if we hit that. I only sell token qty’s when the price is rising due to FOMO LOL. Cheers & have a great day!'
on Apple at $300: Why now? - 'I squirted another traunch of our most appreciated shares into our donor advised fund.'
on The delayed launch of Samsung's Galaxy 26 gave Apple's iPhones a boost - 'David & Gregg, thank you both for your observation that a delayed Galaxy S26 launch is just that, delayed, and diehard Galaxy users would not jump ship, least of all to iPhone because of that. BUT, if social media (Reddit) is to be believed, there’s plenty of folks in both the iOS and Android worlds who will voice their displeasure & dissatisfaction with either iOS or specific Android maker/Android software problems, or had hardware or support issues, and now are willing to try something else not their current product. Now here’s where Counterpoint and others’ use of percentage market share as a marker gets fuzzy, for me at least. Let’s say Q1 last year Apple sold 100 units, Samsung 50 units, and the Android rest 100 units. Total 250, Apple share 40.0%. FFwd to this Quarter, and say Apple sells exact the same 100, Samsung only 44, and the rest contracts to 86. Total is 230, a 8% shrinkage of the total market. Samsung goes down 12% due to delayed sales of flagships and maybe contraction of its low & mid devices, the rest of Android declines 13%, total Android drop = 13.6%. Here, Apple sells no more, no less, 0 volume gain, yet “market share” increased to 100/230 = 43.5%, a 9% increase while not selling any more YoY, and “could be” interpreted as filling the vacuum left by Samsung’s deficit and Android’s decline. Now certainly, Apple could have sold 106 while Samsung sold 45 and Android fell to 85, giving Apple 106/236 = 45%, a volume gain of 6% YoY, while its market share increased 12%, Android dropped 14%. This time a real Apple gain against a real Android shrinkage. To me, Apple cares not a whit about market share or what Android (or PC) competition is doing, precisely because Apple has no control over that. What Apple DOES care about is selling more in absolute terms which grows revenue, or more revenue in absolute terms by growing ASP (“favorable mix”, “leverage”), either way, it’s growing revenue YoY, that’s why focus is not on how many widgets sold but how much you make, and take home. Android loyalists NEVER talk about revenue or profits for the Android vendor, instead focusing on number sold (but not average price), specs, features, parts, battery size, and value bang for the buck they spend, sure in the belief that they paid the least for the most. If their favorite maker sold more in a particular region, then it’s superior and other regions are rigged, particularly the US. No question that the US banned Huawei on security grounds, giving Apple, Samsung, Motorola most of the country, and no Chinese OEM has made any serious attempt to crack the market. Yet in China, Samsung is essentially discriminated out, India, while populous, has a limited, for now, purchasing power. In regions like Europe, Asia Pacific where Apple and Android do compete, Apple maintains control of the premium tier, Android the rest. That is how it always has been. A few even say that only India and China are the true large markets that prove the dominance numerically of Android and US & Europe are rigged against “foreign” Chinese makers. Android numeric advantage, Apple Revenue advantage. Oh, One other thing. Any pointing out how Apple makes more revenue to them, they’ll tell you Apple has brainwashed you and others to pay for overpriced junk that could be bested by Android products at a cheaper price, so you’re just contributing to a greedy monopolistic American consumerist company, while Chinese OEMs offer real value, real tech, for a more affordable price, and they don’t prioritize profit over serving vastly more people. But the android folks also have little brand loyalty, flitting and swapping products at will, buying new smartphones every 2-3 years and discarding the old ones, as if that wasn’t consumerism at its worst. And of course, you have to be a true techie to love and enjoy and modify an Android because that’s what all Android people do, that makes them technologically more advanced than those people who use a closed off iOS that’s simple and too easy, meaning anyone who is buying one is not technically inclined and knows little about tech, just buys what Apple gives them, and they’d buy different if they only could see what else was out there. That makes Apple buyers inferior to Android buyers. Some say all of Apple’s sales and revenue figures and data Apple puts out are lies, and so is the sales data that research firms publish if it isn’t complementary to their favorite. Etc. etc., it’s a real nasty jumbled world out there in Android land.'
on Apple at $300: Why now? - 'I sold all my AAPL when it hit 300 ! I will reinvest in several distributing equity funds, since at 73 I need a stable income…'
