the report
After the New York close yesterday AAPL reported its 2Q13 earnings results (AAPL’s fiscal year ends in September). Revenues were $43.6 billion, up 9% year-on-year. EPS, however, were down 18% yoy, at $10.09. The latter figure was slightly ahead of the Wall Street analyst consensus of $9.97, a number that been ratcheting down in recent weeks.
The company guided to flattish sales in 3Q13, with mild margin contraction.
It announced a 15% increase in the quarterly dividend to $3.05 a share, meaning a current dividend yield of just over 3%.
APPL also intends to buy back $60 billion in stock before the end of calendar 2015. That would be 15% of the company at current prices. AAPL now has $147 billion in cash, of which $104 billion is held outside the US. It won’t touch the foreign holdings for the buyback. Instead, it will issue bonds in the US to get the money it needs.
This piece of financial engineering will have two impacts. It will boost the growth rate of EPS by at least an additional 5 percentage points per year. And the financial leverage will increase AAPL’s return on equity from its already heady 25%+.
The stock was initially up about 5% on this news. Then, during the conference call, AAPL management said it won’t have its next new product launch until fall. The gains evaporated and were replaced by a slight loss.
what’s going on
Two factors:
margin erosion
1. smartphones
As I see it (remember, AAPL is pretty opaque), the emergence of Samsung as a competitor in the high end of the smartphone market,where AAPL makes its biggest profits, has caused that segment to mature faster than AAPL had expected. Unit volume growth is now coming mainly from emerging markets, where the price of AAPL’s cutting-edge phones is too high. The company is selling older models (iPhone4s) there, at discount prices–and therefore reduced margins.
2. tablets
A year ago, it looked to me like 2/3 of AAPL’s tablet volume was from its newest model iPads. Today, unit volumes are much higher, but less than a quarter are the newest 10″ iPads. The rest is a combination of iPad minis (a runaway success) and bulk sales of iPad2s to institutions. Both of the latter are at lower margins.
My guess is that we’re at or near a gross margin low point now.
continuing PE multiple contraction
The maturing of the smartphone market has been actively discussed in the financial community for a couple of years. In my view, worry about this possibility is the main reason that, despite booming sales and earnings, the price earnings multiple on AAPL’s stock had contracted from the high teens to around 12 by the second half of last year. Relative to the market, the multiple went from a premium of 25% to a discount of 25% over the same time period.
Unpleasant for holders, maybe, but understandable.
Over the past 6-8 months, however, the multiple has contracted further, both in absolute terms (to under 10) and relative (to a discount of more than 40%). In fact, yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an article comparing AAPL with HWP and DELL. That’s kind of like comparing night and day–the single thing I can see that ties AAPL to these two truly terrible companies is the similarity of their price earnings multiples.
Yes, when fast growers begin to slow down, the PE contracts, often violently. And because a good portion of the contraction is an emotional thing, the multiple shrinkage is usually greater than one would expect. But even seeing this process over and over, I didn’t imagine that a fundamentally sound company like AAPL could be trading at 9x in a market trading at 15x.
where to from here?
Note, first, that I’ve been wrong about the stock for a while.
I think the stock buyback makes economic sense, and it will probably at least stabilize the AAPL stock price. I don’t think the addition of debt to the capital structure will have any effect.
It may be a big stretch, but to me the 15% dividend increase says that’s what AAPL’s board expects its earnings growth rate over the next few years to be, financial engineering aside. I think that’s a reasonable assumption, and could be conservative.
AAPL management would do the most for its stock by being more forthright with investors about current business challenges and how it plans to deal with them. That’s not likely, however, if the 2Q13 earnings call is any indication.
That leaves holders waiting for new product announcements–and subsequent earnings acceleration–at summer’s end.