Tag Archives: AAPL

David Einhorn and Apple (AAPL)

February 7, 2013 By in Industry Analysis, Recent Market Action, Stock ideas, Technology, Wireless Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

It’s been a long day and I’ve gotten off to a late start.

the proposal

Hedge fund manager David Einhorn, who owns on behalf of his clients (so the internet tells me) over a million AAPL shares, has proposed to the company that it issue a perpetual (meaning it never comes due, and is therefore never redeemed) preferred stock with a total face value of $50 billion, paying a dividend of $2 per year.  The stock would be distributed for free to existing AAPL shareholders.

He’s apparently been discussing this idea with AAPL management since last May.

The proposal is a clever, novel twist on a finance truism   …namely, that if a security is a composite of disparate elements, like growth businesses and value ones, separating the two will increase the valuation of each.

The idea is that if a firm is composed of, say, mobile semiconductor design and cement mixing, growth investors will love the first and hate the second.  The opposite with value investors.  So either group will demand payment, in the form of a lower price earnings multiple, for being forced to take the part they don’t like or want.  Therefore, if you split the two parts up, the multiple on both will rise.

In the AAPL case, the potential split is between a security with earnings growth potential and one solely dependent on income/cash flow generation.

AAPL’s reaction to Einhorn

AAPL’s reaction has been to ask shareholders to vote at the next general meeting to change the company charter to explicitly ban the kind of preferred Einhorn wants.

…Einhorn’s

Einhorn’s reaction to that has been to sue, to seek publicity and to take his own case to shareholders.

my take

The story is nowhere as simple as this.  There’s lots of stuff going on behind the scenes.  Details tomorrow.

Apple(AAPL)’s 1Q13 earnings

January 24, 2013 By in earnings conference calls, Stock ideas, Technology, Wireless Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

the report

After the close yesterday AAPL announced its 1Q13 earnings results (the company’s fiscal year ends in October).  AAPL earned $13.81 per share on revenues of $54.5 billion, both all-time records.  Sales were up 18% year on year, EPS were down by $.06.  EPS exceeded the Wall Street consensus by a little.  Revenues were a tiny bit lower.

Note that 1Q13 had 13 weeks in it, 1Q12 had 14.  On an apples to apples basis, sales would have been up by about 25% and eps would have shown a gain of 10%+, I think.

new guidance

AAPL also announced it was changing the way it would give forward-looking earnings guidance–and provided the first figures using the new method.  Under Steve Jobs, the company gave what inevitably proved ludicrously low single-number suggestions about what its sales, margins and EPS for the following quarter would be.  I’m not positive AAPL intended its “guidance” to be funny, but the process ended up being almost a parody of the way most other companies proceed.  My strong impression is that AAPL knew the figures it suggested were wildly inaccurate.

Under Tim Cook, AAPL has decided to become a bit more conventional.  During the conference call the CFO said that 2Q13 revenue will likely be $41 billion – $43 billion.  Gross margin will be between 37.5% and 38.5%, operating expenses $3.8 billion – $3.9 billion.  Other income will be about $350 million and the tax rate will be around 26%.  Unlike the past, no EPS figure was given.

All that would imply EPS of around $10 for 2Q13–a figure substantially below the brokerage house consensus of $11.50.  Of course, until we have actuals to compare with we won’t know whether the new company guidance protocol is intended to be any more accurate than the old.

Nothing on the call thrilled Wall Street.  As I’m writing this in mid-afternoon, AAPL shares are down about 12% in an otherwise flat market.

details

The iPhone is fine.  Units were up 29% yoy (30%+, apples to apples), revenues up 28%.   iPhone 5 was capacity constrained for most of the quarter, iPhone 4 for the entire period.  So sales could have been higher.  Despite this, sales were in line with the growth of the smartphone industry. Remember, too, that smartphones are AAPL’s main business, comprising 60% of revenues and more than 2/3 of operating profit.  So this is the business that counts.

two points of weakness

Macs (10% of sales)

AAPL was capacity constrained with new iMacs.  AAPL’s PC unit volume was down 22% yoy (-15% is probably a better apples to apples number), in a market that declined by 6%, however. So having more iMacs on the shelves would have affected the degree of market underperformance, not the fact.   Higher unit selling prices meant that revenue declined by about 10% ata.

iPads (20% of sales)

Units were up 48% yoy (60% ata). That’s good.   But revenues were up only 22% (30%? ata).  That’s bad.

Yoy the average selling price of iPads in total (minis, iPad 2s and the newest models) dropped from $568 in 1Q12 to $467 during 1Q13.  In other words, during the year AAPL saw a massive move away from its flagship tablet offering toward cheaper models.  My back of the envelope guess is that the company sold around 13 million newest model iPads during the 2011 holiday season   …and only about half as many this time around.

Significance?

A while ago, AAPL decided to move its computer line upmarket.  My guess is that it’s now suffering from a cyclical falloff in demand caused by macroeconomic weakness–and made somewhat worse by the high price points.

The iPad numbers say to me that the tablet market is already quickly evolving away from the original high profit margin format of the original iPad, either toward a $400 price point for corporate/ education use and a $200-$300 price for consumers.  If I’m correct, the tablet market may end up being much bigger than previously thought, but it won’t follow anything like the high profit trajectory of the smartphone.  Note, too, that mini production was capacity constrained during the quarter.  The average unit price might have even been lower if AAPL had been able to satisfy all its potential mini customers.

my take

The tablet numbers are the only disturbing thing I found in the APPL quarterly information.  From what I’ve read, I’m not sure anyone else has noticed, however.  But both in tablets and Macs, AAPL has given the first hints that even it can be subject to business cycle forces.  That’s another way of saying that the company’s peak earnings acceleration phase may be behind it.

From a stock market point of view, however, investors have been discounting the arrival of this day (incorrectly, until now) for a half-decade.  AAPL has $137 billion in cash, about a third of its market capitalization, and no debt.  If we assume the company can earn $50 a share this year, it’s trading a 9x earnings, while growing at a bit less than 15% in weak economic times.  Better economic times should move that growth rate north.  Ex cash, AAPL shares are trading at 6x.  That’s crazy low.

where will the buyers come from?

I’ve read somewhere recently that over 3/4 of all equity mutual funds in the US have AAPL as one of their top few positions.  Equity oriented hedge funds have been up to their ears in the stock for a long time.

Two reasons why:

–it’s been a great stock to own for almost ten years, and

–at its peak, AAPL represented 10% of the IT sector’s market cap and 5% of the S&P 500′s.  Therefore, any professional concerned with outperforming an index would be forced to establish at least a market weighting in the stock in his portfolio, if for no other reason than to protect himself from losing ground to a surging AAPL stock price.

So, who’s left to buy?  No one.

What I’ve just written sounds pretty stupid, but it’s a situation that occurs often in smaller markets where one or two stocks dominate the index.  We just haven’t seen it in the US during my lifetime.

A common strategy in these markets is to neutralize the whales (have a market weighting) and try to achieve outperformance elsewhere. So virtually everyone already owns all the stock he ever intends to own.   The result is that surprisingly small amounts of buying and selling can move the giants a long way.

This may be happening with AAPL.  Certainly, in my opinion, the fundamentals don’t warrant the current low price.  But it’s anyone’s guess how long the current malaise may last.

going ex-growth: the (most times) arduous trip from growth stock to value stock

January 23, 2013 By in economics, from growth to value: the life cycle, Portfolio management Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

growth stocks

Growth stock investors are dreamers.  They try to find stocks that will grow faster than the consensus expects, for longer than the consensus expects.

As a good growth stock reports surprisingly good earnings results, the stock price typically rises.  Two causes:

–the stock adjusts up for the better earnings; and

–expectations for future growth rise, leading to price earnings multiple expansion.

If, for example, the stock is trading at 15x expected year-ahead earnings before the report, after the report it may end up trading at 18x the new, higher, level of expected earnings.

At some point, this explosive upward force becomes spent.  The reason may be technological change, or maybe new competition, or maybe the market for the company’s products is completely saturated  (a fuller discussion).  As this happens, the supercharged upward path I’ve just described begins to go into reverse.  The company reports disappointing earnings.  The stock moves downward to reflect new, lower, earnings expectations, and the price earnings multiple contracts.

Today’s question:  how/when does this negative process stop?

It’s important to realize that professional growth stock investors have seen this movie of mayhem and destruction many times before.  They know the plot lines well.  There may initially be some doubt about exactly when the downturn is commencing.  But growth investors know that how they sell a stock is the most crucial determinant of their long-term performance.  So once they become convinced that the salad days are done, they’ll be quick to sell.

The initial buyers will likely be non-professionals who see a decline as a chance to buy a stock they’ve heard about from the financial press or from friends and which appears on the surface to be less expensive than it previously was.   Or they may be members of the growing class of professional traders, many of them associated with hedge funds, who are not particularly interested in company fundamentals, but who buy and sell for short-term profits, either “reading” stock price charts or using their “feel” for the rhythms of the markets to make their decisions.  Eventually both groups also figure out the bloom is off the rose.  In my experience, the traders sell to cut their losses; the non-professionals continue to hang on.

The eventual home for former high-fliers is with value investors, who specialize in companies with flaws where the stock has been beaten down in an excess of negative emotion.  Typically, value investors use computer screens to identify the lowest, say, quintile of the market measured by price/cash flow or price/book value.  That will be the universe they study more closely to make their stock selections.  Many times, these stocks will be in highly business cycle-sensitive industries,  or ones that show little growth.  Companies may be laggards in their industries, either because of poor management or other fixable problems.  Value investors typically say that they buy $1 worth of assets/earnings for $.30 and sell it at $.80.

The point is it usually takes a long period of time, and enormous deterioration of a growth stock’s fundamentals, before the fallen angel sinks low enough to catch the value stock investor’s attention.  Also, like their growth stock counterparts, value investors have industries that they have studied carefully for years and which constitute their comfort zone.  The two areas of familiarity are pretty close to mutually exclusive.  So it may take an extremely cheap price for a value investor to take the risk of buying, say, a tech company instead of a presumably safer–or at least better understood–cement plant, auto parts maker or steel mill.

As I’ve written many times before, the one exception to this pattern that I’ve seen is AAPL, whose price earnings deterioration began five years or more ago (depending on how you count) despite continuing explosive earnings gains.  In fact, at present, AAPL shares are trading at a 25% discount to the market median PE multiple, according to Value Line.  True, there are qualitative signs that AAPL’s growth heyday may already be in the rear view mirror.  But the market’s bad treatment of the stock seems excessive to me.  Price action after the upcoming earnings report will be instructive.

what’s wrong with AAPL?

January 15, 2013 By in growth vs value, Industry Analysis, Stock ideas, Technology, Wireless Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

AAPL shares have been steadily underperforming the S&P 500 since late September, losing 30% of their value relative to the index over this span.

I think several factors are involved:

1.  potential income tax law changes.

In the recent debate over increasing tax rates, suggestions were circulating that the tax preference on long-term capital gains vs. ordinary income should be eliminated.  That would have raised the Federal tax on long-term gains from 15% to over 40%.  The worry that this would happen was the trigger for taxable AAPL holders with large profits (meaning just about everyone) to realize at least part of their gains in 2012.

I think this was a big reason for downward pressure on AAPL shares during 4Q12.  However, the relative weakness has continued pretty consistently so far in 2013, other than during the first couple of hours of trading in the new year.  So it can’t be the whole reason.

2. a slowdown in iPhone 5 sales?

 Component suppliers to AAPL have been saying for a month or so that the company is deferring orders for iPhone 5 parts.  The latest such announcement comes in the Nikkei newspapers in Japan, usually an extremely reliable source.  AAPL orders to Japanese makers of  iPhone 5 screens for 1Q13 have supposedly been halved to 33 million (I read about it online and in the WSJ and FT).

In itself, this is not such a big deal, in my view.  It’s not clear whether AAPL has excess inventories or whether it’s shifting business to alternate suppliers in, say, Taiwan or mainland China.  And it’s also possible that any slowdown will only last a quarter or two.  I don’t know, but it’s possible.

3.  Who are the new buyers?    

This is one of those odd stock market phenomena.

Individuals and hedge funds caught on to the AAPL  story before many mutual funds.  But the damage to relative performance from not owning AAPL, or from having less than the market weighting became so severe that virtually every mainstream professional has already been forced to build a huge position in the stock.

So who’s left to buy?  Almost no one, in my view.

In fact, early supporters, who have enjoyed outperformance for most of a decade from holding a lot of AAPL must be thinking that the way to distinguish themselves from rivals today is to be underweight the stock.  This can happen in two ways–either by selling shares of AAPL or by just not buying any more as new money comes in.

Maybe this sounds a little crazy to you, but I think this is the main issue the stock is struggling with today.

4.  Is the AAPL growth story “broken”?  

Typically as a growth stock continues to report surprisingly strong earnings, its stock price moves sharply higher.

Two reasons:

–the market adjusts to the higher level of profits and

–the price earnings multiple expands, as investors raise their expectations for future growth.

As earnings begin to disappoint, as they sooner or later must, this process goes into reverse.  The stock price adjusts to lower current earnings and the price earnings multiple, usually sky-high by this time, begins to contract.  Multiple contraction is, in my view, the worse of the two.

AAPL’s case is unusual, however (in fact, it’s the only stock I’ve seen exhibit this behavior).

The company’s earnings are 10x what they were five years ago.  During the entire earnings expansion, however, AAPL’s PE has been contracting.  Yes, an accounting change may have caused part of this.  Still, the stock traded at 30x earnings in 2008 and trades at 12x now!  In other words, a slowdown in growth has been baked into this Wall Street cake for a long time.

I don’t think there’s any expectation in today’s stock price that AAPL will ever produce another spectacular product like the iPod or the iPhone.  As I read it, the current quote expresses doubt that AAPL will be able to defend its market position against competitors like Samsung.  That seems a little harsh to me   ..but I haven’t done careful research to convince myself that this is the case.

 

 

 

 

demise of the e-reader: implications

December 27, 2012 By in Current Market Thoughts, e-readers, Entertainment, Industry Analysis, Publishing, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

e-reader sales

A Christmas Eve Financial Times article indicates that while e-reader sales in 2012 will still be robust, the category may be on the brink of a rapid decline in popularity.  Its source is IHS iSuppli.   I’ve found the data in a graph from emarketer.com (note the convoluted chain of attribution–PSI cites emarketer, which in turn cites CNET citing IHS).

The reason for the falloff?   …the rise of light, powerful cheap multi-function tablets, which can serve as e-readers as well as do a lot of other stuff, for within a reasonable distance of the price of a dedicated e-reader alone.  This development wouldn’t be surprising, since the multi-function smartphone has replaced the dedicated music player for many users.

(The above is what I see as the consensus view. It’s not a unanimous one, though.   The Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute, which presumably has special insight into the Taiwanese companies that actually make the e-readers, predicts a bounceback in sales for 2013.  So we should at least keep in mind that the consensus may not be correct.)

Implications, if the FT is right?

In a world where the decision on what merchant to buy an e-book from hinges on what dedicated e-reader you own, the firm with the largest number of e-readers in circulation (Amazon) should be the dominant factor.  Other, non-compatible e-reader makers, like Barnes and Noble, should have small relative market shares.  Other would-be booksellers are footnotes, at best.

The game changes substantially, I think, if the key decision becomes what app the potential buyer has on his tablet.  That’s because any customer can download a new book app with a couple of taps.  Unlike the case with music, where users may want to construct playlists, it probably doesn’t matter much whether one’s entire library is on one app or several.  So the key factor in the purchase decision probably comes down to price.

It’s possible that AMZN can develop a tablet that’s the full equivalent of a Samsung or Google offering.  The performance of the Kindle Fire suggests that’s not likely.  But, if it can, perhaps AMZN can preserve its “ecosystem” with avid readers for a while longer.  And in doing so it would be able to bar the download of other booksellers’ apps onto its machines.

Personally, I doubt Barnes and Noble will be able to create a viable tablet.  Yes, it does have its alliance with MSFT.  But that only seems to me to guarantee that BKS can have the Zune of tablets.

AAPL is in an unusual position.  Its strategy has been to generate superior profits by selling up-market devices at premium prices.  Does it want to compete in the (eventual) $100 tablet market?  My off-the-cuff guess is that it doesn’t.  By default, this makes AAPL less of a player in the e-book market.

On the one hand, this would make the big publishers’ alliance with AAPL of a few years ago look extremely short-sighted.  On the other, it creates the opportunity for them to have a common app that bypasses both BKS and AMZN.

the stocks?

Any restructuring book distribution by cutting out dedicated e-readers is obviously not a reason for the companies that control the e-reader market to celebrate.  The biggest single loser, I think, is potentially BKS, since AMZN has 3x the market share in e-books that BKS has.  It isn’t that AMZN escapes the change unscathed.  But it already has lower prices than BKS; its large relative size gives it another big advantage in the price-drive. environment I think will develop.  Also, it’s not clear that AAPL will abandon the up-market strategy that snatched it out of the jaws of bankruptcy to become a serious competitor in the mass tablet market.

All in all, I score the situation as a net plus for AMZN.

The wildcard is potential new competitors who might be able do offer superior app performance.

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