A Broken Company

[wizwor]

After all the speculation about the screens report, Apple went public with their numbers today and the news was disappointing. Shares plunged 10% after hours and analysts are predicting doom and gloom. Between you and me, these predictions are no more credible than the speculation on the locked thread. No matter. If you are an iFan, this would be a great time to buy a chunk of the company. Be careful, though -- it's possible to lose money buying Apple at $460!

from http://www.cnbc.com/id/100402489...

I think this is really a broken company that is over-owned

from http://www.cnbc.com/id/100402363

Apple Inc reported quarterly revenue that slightly missed Wall Street expectations as sales of its flagship iPhone came in below analyst targets, sending its shares down more than 4 percent.

from Bloomberg...

Apple Inc. posted no profit growth and the slowest increase in sales in 14 quarters amid rising costs and accelerating competition with Samsung Electronics Co.

[fjtorres]

7 Billion in business in their first quarter in China. With room for another 50-70% growth.
Are expectations for Apple's growth absurd? As absurd as the reports of imminent disaster.

It is hardly Apple's fault if linear thinkers thought the party could go on forever and bid the stock up beyond reason. Sooner or later the market for their products was going to correct itself.

At this point the real challenge for Cook is Margin vs Share: how to balance product design and pricing to optimize net.

[wizwor]

The real challenge is to market the next amazing thing. Absent a new high margin, high demand product, Apple is just an expensive commodity.

China is no panacea -- ask Jeff Immelt. How much do you expect Apple's employees to spend on iStuff? How long before similar products flood the market? Apple owes a lot of its success to western courts. I'm not sure that support will exist in Asia.

[Fbone]

Apple sold 47.8 million iPhones during the period, up from 37 million a year ago; 22.9 million iPads, up from 15.4 million a year ago; 4.1 million Macs, down from 5.2 million a year ago; 12.7 million iPods, down from 15.4 million a year ago.

The company posted fiscal first-quarter earnings excluding items of $13.81 per share, down from $13.87 a share in the year-earlier period.

Revenue increased 18 percent to $54.51 billion from $46.33 billion a year ago.

Analysts had expected the company to report earnings excluding items of $13.47 a share on $54.73 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

They missed analysts' target by $220 million. Loose change.
And they earned larger than expected profit. Not bad.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fbone

They missed analysts' target by $220 million. Loose change.
And they earned larger than expected profit. Not bad.

Woe is them, huh?
The real miss comes from the Macintoshes, btw, not iOS. Off by 20% no less.

It seems the Post-PC era is also the Post-Mac era.

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It seems the Post-PC era is also the Post-Mac era.

No doubt. Only us old fogies are still attached to our desktops. More and more its about portable social media.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

No doubt. Only us old fogies are still attached to our desktops. More and more its about portable social media.

Not entirely. Its hard to compile an epub on a tablet compared to a desktop PC.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

No doubt. Only us old fogies are still attached to our desktops. More and more its about portable social media.

I dunno.
I've seen people *try* to create/edit content on iOS; it ain't pretty.
(The Post-PC era no more means PCs will go away than the PC era did away with mainframes. Post-PC is really PC-plus.)

Now, MACs have generally been strongest with consumers and weakest in corporate so it isn't exactly news that as consumers move to appliances for communication and light computing tasks the MAC should suffer more than the PC but a nearly 20% shortfall right after a refresh does not bode well for that part of the business.

[HansTWN]

And it has been estimated -- no idea how reliable those figures are --- that iphone 5 accounts for only 50% of new iphone sales. That means half of phone sales are older models 4 and 4S.

And let us not forget that US prices are distorted. Endusers pay the same $200-300 with a contract for the iphone they do for other high-end phones. But the telcos are paying much higher prices to Apple than they do to other manufacturers, in effect handing out extra subsidies for the iPhone. The question is how long this situation can continue.

[Graham]

I have to admit that I'm with Apple on this one. Calling record iPhone sales by far a failure just because they didn't hit a 'magic' 50 million figure plucked out of the air is daft.

Graham

[HappyMartin]

Try edit a 240 MB image on a tablet. It's no surprise there is a drop in desktop sales, there has not been a new machine in over 2 years. I wanted to upgrade but there was nothing to buy.

[David Munch]

I would love to be broke with 130 billion dollars on my bank account, 50 billion dollars in revenue and record sales... :O

Low Mac sales is by part affected by the low production of iMacs, which make sense. But I still would have expected higher sales year over year.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by David Munch

I would love to be broke with 130 billion dollars on my bank account, 50 billion dollars in revenue and record sales... :O

Not that old hat again, thank you! Anyway, down to about $450.- from more than 700 on the day when iPhone5 was released --- if you are such a fervent believer that Apple's business is still growing steadily, looks like a lot of people will be glad to sell you their Apple shares.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

And it has been estimated -- no idea how reliable those figures are --- that iphone 5 accounts for only 50% of new iphone sales. That means half of phone sales are older models 4 and 4S.

Can't really pull anything out of the figures to back that up or disprove it.

I think if it were true you would expect to see a reduction in revenue per phone, but that is basically flat at $642 for 2013Q1 vs $647 for 2012Q1.

iPad figures are more interesting. Revenue per unit is down from $568 to $467. Interesting to know if that is iPad Mini sales, or sales of the older iPad 2.

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by wizwor

- it's possible to lose money buying Apple at $460!

I am glad you said that.

After a lot of analysis, I think you could be right.