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Originally Posted by wizwor
At $300, what is AAPL P/E? I think it's 10 at $450. Seems cheap in a vacuum. I won't pretend to be a well informed investor. I agree with your second point. AAPL has had a LOT of bad news of late. The problem with brand loyalty, is that people die or become satisfied -- both hurt sales.
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The reason for the stampede is that the "growth investors" are reading yesterday's news as signs that Apple has peaked. So they no longer see it as a growth stock. But Apple hasn't been a growth stock for a couple years. They have been riding the momentum from the iPad intro and the global migration to smartphones but their product line is clearly stale. That is where all the rumors about the Apple HDTV come from, the desperate hope that they have "one more thing" to justify the pie-in-the-sky expectations of $1000 for AAPL.
But there is no Apple HDTV and even if there were, (today) that is exactly the wrong market for their business model. No magic bullet there.
But there is a big gulf between irrational expectations and a broken company.
What we have is a company with major problems but that is still thriving. Yes, iPhone 5 has issues--but the faithful simply bought iPhone 4s if they had qualms about the 5. They still have a lot of brand equity with their customers and the iOS lock-in is a powerful force; enough to make the Mini a market-changing product despite itself.
Apple has had a rough year; they've made quite a few back-to-back mistakes. And they're still riding high.
They are what they are.
They're not a "growth" company in tech industry terms but they are a mature company at its very peak. And that is plenty formidable--things have to get a whole lot worse for Apple to be broken. And it will take very little to make the "analysts" forget about 2012.