It’s beat up on Apple season again…
From Kevin O’Leary to CNBC people are whining about Apple doing what’s right for itself…
If Kevin O’Leary knew what was good for him he would’ve bought back into AAPL yesterday.
Public companies have a responsibility to maximize shareholder value while also, hopefully, doing no harm… Apple succeeds in both of these key metrics.
As a company that has turned a commodity (cellphones) into a luxury business that reaps >80% of an entire industry’s profits, Apple knows how to make money.
Analysts complain that they won’t know how to value the company any longer…
But they’ve never known how to value it in the first place.
Analysts make up stock predictions with price targets, up or down, based on a story they tell themselves.
Of course you can easily value Apple… Smartphones have become necessary extensions of ourselves…
Apple has the best overall package of bundled digital services around… And is a company that isn’t reliant on a slippery, personal data-based advertising business model.
Fast forward 10 years…
Will Apple have a less significant or more significant foothold in health? What about finance? Or our homes? What about transportation? How about music and entertainment? Or artificial intelligence…? Fashion and wearables…?
The answers to these questions are obvious because they’re rhetorical questions.
With a nice 1.3% dividend, a P/E of 18 and about 25% of its market cap in cash… This is one of the simplest calculations for an analyst to do.
What’s that worth?