Category Archives: Technology

AAPL’s 2Q12: deja vu all over again

April 25, 2012 By in China, earnings conference calls, emerging markets, Hong Kong, Industry Analysis, Stock ideas, Technology, Wireless Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

the results

After the close of New York trading yesterday, AAPL reported results for its second fiscal quarter (the company’s fiscal year ends in October).

It was–contrary to highly publicized negative analyst expectations–another litany of record performances.

Revenue was $39.2 billion, up 58.7% year on year.

Net income was $11.6 billion, up 93.3%.

EPS was $12.30, a 92% yoy gain.  Of 42 analyst estimates for the quarter, the lowest was $8.46, the highest $11.80, the median $9.81.  So, once again, AAPL blew away the consensus.

details

The company sold 35.1 million iPhones during the quarter, up 88%.  This compares with 46% growth in the overall smartphone market.

iPad sales were 11.8 million, a 151% yoy increase.

4 million Macs went out the door, up 7% yoy (in a PC market that was up 2%).

iPod unit volume was 7.7 million units, down by 15%.  The music player–which was once half the company–now represents only 3% of sales, however.

what caught my eye

AAPL continues to be capacity constrained with the new iPad.  The huge tablet sales gain this quarter appears to have been driven by demand–especially from schools–for iPad2, once AAPL dropped the price to $399.  I don’t see any reason to think that this new-found new source of tablet demand will go away any time soon.  And it could turn out to be very big.

Greater China was the geographical star.  Sales in the region, which made up 20% of the AAPL total for the quarter, tripled yoy.  iPhone sales were 5x the year-ago level.

Mac sales barely outpaced the market for the quarter.  But that’s comparing a newly refreshed product line a year ago with the same lineup today–now a little long in the tooth.  So I don’t think the weaker than usual comparison means anything.

Management gave its usual song and dance to “justify” its low-ball earnings estimate for the June quarter–$8.68/ share.  The company did make two reasonable points, though.  It expects to sell a lot of iPads, which carry lower margins than other AAPL products.  Also, 2+ million of the iPhones sold to telephone companies during the period went to replenish store inventories depleted during the holiday season.  This extra demand won’t be present in the current quarter.  Neither is that significant, in my opinion.  Together, they may just mean that yoy gains in 3Q12 won’t be quite as impressive as in 2Q12.

pre-announcement analyst panic

AAPL sold off by about 15% in the days before the earnings release.

I was struck by the number of analysts who rushed to publicly validate the price decline by offering negative assessments (now proven to have been wildly incorrect) of the company’s 2Q12 prospects.  One can only imagine what they were saying in private meetings with institutional clients.  I was also struck by the dearth of AAPL defenders–although it’s possible their comments were edited out.

For instance,:

–one analyst I read predicted Mac sales would be down, year on year, in the quarter–without mentioning either how difficult the comparison was or that Macs only make up a bit more than 10% of AAPL’s business.

–another said in a recent TV interview that he was lowering his forecast of iPhone sales from 33 million to 30 million–and intimated he thought that figure might still be too high.

I have four observations:

1.  I think the analysts in question extrapolated from what they knew about the US and Europe to the rest of the world.  When you think about it, that seems kind of loony.  Why would you think China, which is growing at 7%+ and where people are just starting to buy smartphones, would look like the US?

2.  More generally, the incident says something about the quality of research on Wall Street.  APPL isn’t the only case.  Analysts did the same sort of extrapolation with INTC last year.

3.  It says something admirable about AAPL that they don’t have one standard of information dissemination for ordinary people like you and me, and another one for Wall Street analysts.

4.  This shows how a rumor-driven market works.  Once a story starts, information sources rush to repeat and amplify the rumors, mostly because they’re worried that otherwise they’ll be thought to be out of touch.

AAPL’s stock?  It still looks cheap to me.

 

INTC’s 1Q12: encouraging signs

April 24, 2012 By in earnings conference calls, Industry Analysis, Stock ideas, Technology, Wireless Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

the results

After the close of trading on April 17th, INTC reported 1Q11 results that were a bit better than the company had guided to three months earlier.  Revenues came in at $12.9 billion, net income at $2.7 billion and eps at $.56 ($.53 on a non-GAAP basis).  This compares with the Wall Street analysts’ consensus of $.50 and $.58 that the company posted in the year-ago quarter.

Quarter on quarter, results were down, as the company felt the full force of the supply disruptions caused by flooding of hard disk drive factories in Thailand.  Basically, INTC customers couldn’t get hard drives to make all the PCs they wanted.  They also didn’t know when production would return to normal.  So they cancelled orders for new microprocessors from INTC and ran down to the bone the microprocessor inventories they had on hand.

Year on year comparisons aren’t straightforward, either.  1Q11 contained 14 weeks, versus a “normal” quarter of 13, like 1Q12 was.  So the yoy revenue comparison, $12.9 billion in 1Q12 vs. $12.8 billion in 1Q11 is considerably better than it looks.  The biggest yoy difference in expense comes in R&D, where this year’s $2.4 billion is much higher than the $1.9 billion INTC laid out in 1Q11.  Had R&D spending been flat yoy, INTC’s net would also have been flat, and eps up slightly (on a lower share count) yoy.  Not bad for a component-constrained quarter that was one week shorter than 1Q11.

details

I reread my post on INTC’s 4Q11 before starting to write this.  I think you should read it, too.  I haven’t changed my thinking.  And otherwise, I’d just be repeating here what I said there.

Three factors are new, though:

–it looks like the hard disk drive shortage is over already, a couple of months earlier than INTC had initially thought.  The company expects 2Q12 sales to be in line with final demand, with inventory restocking by customers only happening in the second half.  My guess is the net result will be a slight uptick (maybe $.05) in full-year eps from my prior guess of $2.75 for 1012, rather than just a reshuffling of the quarters. (Remember, this includes $.15 a share that Thai flooding shifted out of 2011 and into this year.)

–INTC has dropped its tax rate guidance from 29% to 28%, which I take to mean the company is lowering its expectations for the US and raising them for emerging markets.

–INTC is starting to churn out 22nm chips in volume.  At the same time, TSMC is reported to be having trouble with its 28nm manufacturing process.  This should help extend INTC’s performance lead–or close its performance gap–versus competitors who use foundries (meaning just about everyone).

where to from here?

As I wrote three (and six) months ago, at $20 a share I think INTC was a buy simply on the notion that the company wouldn’t fade away within the next two or three years.

At close to $30, the decision is different.  I think you have to believe a lot more–at the very least, that ultrabooks will be a big success.  It would be better, of course, if INTC could make some inroads into ARMH’s franchise in tablets and smartphones, as well.  In both areas, signs are encouraging.

–There are already almost two dozen ultrabook models on the market, with another hundred or so on the way before yearend.  Some will be configured to use the touch features of Windows 8; some will be hybrid devices that can function as tablets as well as traditional PCs. Better still, to my mind, is the fact that ultrabooks are coming from Samsung, Asus and Acer–meaning they’ll be stylish and more reliable than, say, Dell.

Ultrabooks have also gotten a very favorable mention in computer guru (and Mac aficionado) Walter Mossberg’s Spring laptop buyers’ guide in the Wall Street Journal. 

–Rather than waiting for customers to come knocking at its door, INTC created a “reference design”–a detailed blueprint–for the ultrabook and presented it to computer manufacturers.  It’s taking a similar tack with cellphones.  It’s offering its reference smartphone design to carriers to use as their “house brand.”  It’s already signing up customers.

Who knows where this will lead?  But the fact that most carriers are selling iPhones to customers at $400 below their cost should be a powerful motivator to look for cheaper alternatives.

emerging markets: political risk in India

March 19, 2012 By in Asian economic development, emerging markets, Wireless Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

the home field advantage

No company ever goes into a foreign country expecting a level playing field.  There are always going to be rules–written and unwritten–that favor the home team.  This is the flip side of the belief that you’re always going to have at least a slight advantage over a foreign company in your domestic market.

One exception–if you’re hoping that the foreigner will buy your domestic business.  Chances are he’d be willing to pay over the odds.  But it’s equally likely the government will force a sale to a domestic competitor.  Around the world, that’s just the way it is.

in sports

We see this all the time in sports.

Olympic judging.

Your favorite baseball team plays an away game.  You can be sure the field will be manicured to minimize the home team’s weaknesses and your strengths. The visitor’s dugout in San Francisco is, unusually, on the first-base side of the field?  Why?  It faces right into the frigid wind off the bay.

The home town timekeeper will make the game clock in basketball or hockey run fast or slow, as the home team requires.

Even the referees will exhibit a home-town bias, perhaps influenced by crowd noise.

what’s not cricket

Some actions are beyond the pale, however.  One such appears to be happening right now in India.

In 2004, when Vodafone was still intent on ruling the world, it entered the Indian cellphone market by buying an interest in an existing player from Hutchison Whampoa.  Aware that if the transaction were done in India it would trigger a capital gains tax of around $2.9 billion, the parties did the deal offshore.

The Indian Tax Department ruled that the tax was still due.  Vodafone refused to pay and lengthy litigation ensued.

Two months ago, the Indian Supreme Court ruled in Vodafone’s favor–that no tax was due.

proposed retroactive tax law change

On Saturday, the Financial Times reported that in its annual budget the Indian government proposes to change the tax law, retroactive to April 1962, to make offshore transactions involving multinationals and Indian subsidiaries subject to domestic capital gains tax.

Although the proposed change, if implemented, will have much wider implications than for Vodafone alone, it is being widely seen as aimed directly at the UK telecoms company.

The issue of course, is that Vodafone has played on the home field and won–but the losing side is trying to change the basic ground rules five years after the fact, in a way that turns victory into defeat.

I think it’s ironic that this situation is arising just as the Indian government has decided to try to woo foreign portfolio investors for the first time.  If the budget documents are not just bluster and parliament makes the retroactive tax law change, that would seem to me to dim substantially the appeal to foreign investors of India’s large domestic population.  The negative effect could last for many years.  For emerging markets investors, then, I think the Vodafone situation bears close watching.

 

 

searching for yield in a zero Fed funds rate world

February 13, 2012 By in Constructing a Portfolio, Current Market Thoughts, Dividends, Strategy, Utilities, Wireless Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

conventional wisdom

Two traditional general rules about the appropriate allocation between equity and fixed income are:

1.  Take your age in years.  That percentage of your assets should be in fixed income; the rest can be in equities.  A thirty-year old, for example, should keep 30% of his assets in bonds and 70% in stocks.  A seventy-year old should have the reverse proportions.

2.  For a retiree, figure what your yearly expenses are.  Keep enough fixed income so that the interest earned will cover these expenses; the rest can go into riskier assets like stocks.

Neither rule applies in today’s world, however, at least in my view.

Only a lottery winner has the luxury of using #2.  Fifteen years ago, when the 10-year Treasury was yielding 8%, $1.25 million worth of them would generate $100,000 in interest income.  Nowadays, you’d need a $5 million investment to earn the same.

Both rules subject the follower to considerable risk as/when interest rates begin to rise.  My friend Denis Jamison deals with this subject in detail in his recent posts on PSI.    …his conclusions.

my quandary

One of my former employers notified me recently that I’m being removed from participation in its fixed income pension plan.  I can either take lump sum distribution or buy an annuity.  I’ve chosen the former, which I’m rolling over into an IRA.

I want to keep the IRA money in income-generating assets, to counterbalance to some degree my growth investor desire to own stocks.

Believe it or not, it takes a month for my old company to process my request.  Also, quaintly enough, it will issue a physical check and send it in the mail to my IRA account.  Looking on the bright side, this gives me some time to figure out what to do.

So I’m looking for dividend-paying stocks.  I’m not the only one, of course.  And with this account I’m starting at a time when the search for such equities by individual investors is close to entering its third year.  Has everything been picked over already?

first thoughts

My preliminary look around for information has turned up two interesting articles:

-the first comes from BCA Research, an independent organization headquartered in Canada (BCA stands for Bank Credit Analyst, its best-known publication).  BCA continues to be very fundamentally sound.  At one time it served primarily individuals and was somewhat technically-oriented and decidedly bearish in tone.  Not so much any more.  Today’s clients are mostly institutions.

In a February 2nd article titled US Equities:  The Total Return Trap,  BCA opines that traditional high income stock groups–utilities, telecom and REITS–are currently overvalued.  It recommends looking for yield among pharmaceuticals, integrated oils and hypermarkets.

–A February 5th piece in the Financial Times points out that significant dividend yields are available among stocks in the EU and in the Pacific.  The article lists the following current yields on various FT regional indices:

Europe (ex the UK)     3.80%

UK          3.40%

Asia Pacific (ex Japan)          3.16%

Global          2.70%

Japan          2.51%

US          1.96%.

my first stops

My order of preference is:  US, UK, Asia ex Japan, Europe.

I’m not so keen on Japan.  I think companies there prefer to pile up cash rather than pay dividends.  The high yield is more a function of wretched stock market performance than rising payouts.

I don’t have strong thoughts on the relative strength of the € vs. the $.  My hunch is that the € is going to be relatively weak, though, undermining the attractiveness of any dividend payment to a dollar-oriented recipient.  If we’re going to enter an extended period of economic stagnation in Euroland, much like the “lost decade(s)” in Japan, however–and I think that’s the most likely scenario–one can reasonably make the argument that, like the ¥, the € could show surprising strength.   I just don’t know.  Until I have more conviction, why take the chance?

The UK is a very income-oriented market and doesn’t carry the same degree of currency uncertainty as the Eurozone, in my opinion.

I’ve got a couple of weeks to do some research.  I’ll write more as I make progress.