Apple stock
-
New Apple Dividend Will Help Push Shares Higher (Nasdaq: AAPL)
A new Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) dividend will make the stock even more attractive while expanding the pool of potential investors.
Apple announced Monday that starting in September, it will pay a $2.65 quarterly dividend.
Apple also announced a $10 billion stock buyback program to be conducted over three years, beginning in September.
The stock buyback was a bigger surprise to analysts. While too small to move the stock significantly, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the intent is to avoid earnings-per-share dilution from future shares issued to reward employees.
The Cupertino, CA company's enormous pile of cash and investments - over $97 billion as of the end of 2011 - had led to increasingly strident calls for an Apple dividend in recent years.
Yet despite today's investor-friendly moves, some think Apple could have done more.
To continue reading, please click here...
-
Apple Stock (Nasdaq: AAPL) at $600: Too Far Too Fast?
After Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) touched $600, it set off speculation about whether the stock is truly worth $600 a share.
Some consider Apple's parabolic run-up in price as a warning sign of a bubble. In December Apple was still trading under $400.
Others look at the escalating sales growth of such Apple products as the iPhone and iPad and see justification for a $600 stock, a $700 stock, or even higher.
So we at Money Morning thought it would be worth comparing Apple's annual earnings numbers with the rise in its stock price since 2006, the year before the iPhone debuted.
Click here to continue reading...
-
Tech Stocks Soar on "Off the Charts" Demand for Apple Inc.'s (Nasdaq: AAPL) Products
If you're invested in technology stocks, you've had a great ride lately.
With demand for Apple Inc.'s (Nasdaq: AAPL) products soaring, tech stocks will continue to do well.
Tech stocks have posted a whopping 16% return in 2012, the top performing sector in the Standard & Poor's 500 index. By comparison, the broader market has notched just a 9% gain year-to-date (YTD).
"Large-cap technology stocks have exceeded our expectations with better revenues, earnings, margins and cash flows," Michael Sansoterra, a sub-adviser for the Ridgeworth Large Cap Growth Fund, told The Wall Street Journal. "You just can't find that elsewhere in the large-cap growth space."
Tech Stocks Offer Bargains
Even as they march higher, prices for tech stocks are a relative bargain.
To continue reading, please click here... -
How Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) Became the Vampire Squid of Tech
Business partnerships with Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) produce abundant profits - but usually only for Apple.
Using its clout as a vendor of highly desirable consumer technology, Apple secures extremely favorable deals with suppliers, providers of goods and services, and retailers.
Such deals are a major reason behind Apple's extraordinary profits.
"Can Apple continue to roll through industry after industry, soak up all the profits, and leave everything it touches as a smoking wreckage?" Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein & Co. told the Los Angeles Times.
Despite increases in business volume, many companies that deal with the Cupertino, CA-company discover it's usually a one-sided relationship when it comes to profits.
Apple has, in effect, become the technology world's "vampire squid" -- a term coined by Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi in 2009 to describe Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS).
To continue reading, please click here... -
How Apple Investors Can Profit from the New iPad
Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) shoveled more coal into its money-making locomotive today (Wednesday) with the official launch of the New iPad.
If the third version of Apple's trend-setting tablet is as big a success as most expect, then owning the company's stock isn't the only way that Apple investors can profit. Many of Apple's suppliers will also reap reward from the New iPad.
The New iPad's marquee features, such as support for 4G LTE networks and the ultra-high resolution Retina display, should help Apple maintain its dominance in the tablet market at least through the end of the year. And if rumors of a 7-inch iPad Mini eventually pan out, Apple will have a cheaper tablet option to appeal to consumers now buying Amazon.com's (Nasdaq: AMZN) $199 Kindle Fire.
A Forrester Research report published yesterday (Tuesday) put the iPad's share of the tablet market at 73%, with no other rival having more than 5%.
Analyst estimates for 2012 iPad sales range from 55 million to 60 million. Apple has sold 55 million iPads since the product's debut in April 2010, winning over not just consumers but multiple markets.
"It's astonishing how fast the product has spread through business, education and health care," Needham & Co. analyst Charles Wolf told USA Today.
Sales of the iPad, along with the iPhone, have pleased Apple investors by pushing stock past $500 a share this year.
Click here to continue reading...
-
A New Way to Play Apple Stock
-
Tech Stocks to Watch: Pandora Media (NYSE: P), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO)
This week's news moving tech stocks includes today's (Tuesday's) Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P) earnings report, tomorrow's (Wednesday's) Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad debut, and Yahoo Inc.'s (Nasdaq: YHOO) rumored layoffs.
Pandora Media (NYSE: P) Earnings: Internet radio site Pandora, which went public June 15 last year, released fourth-quarter earnings after the bell today.
Pandora lost $8.18 million, or five cents a share, due to higher costs for advertising, marketing and content acquisition. Fourth-quarter revenue rose to $81.3 million from $47.6 million, a 71% year-over-year increase. Advertising revenue was $72.1 million, up 74% from the year before, and subscription and other revenue was up 51% to $9.2 million.
To continue reading, please click here... -
Windows 8: Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Strikes Back at Apple and Google
Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) has radically retooled its flagship product, Windows 8, to fight for a bigger piece of a mobile computing market currently dominated by its rivals.
Microsoft unveiled a beta version of Windows 8 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week.
With a final release expected in the fall, Microsoft needs Windows 8 to be a winner.
Microsoft's Windows, which has owned desktop computing with a market share well over 90%, has not fared as well on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
Instead, Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) have dominated the "post-PC era" with such products as the iPad and the Android operating system.
The Redmond, WA, tech giant now hopes that Windows 8, optimized for the touchscreens of mobile computing but sharing a unified look and feel between its tablet and desktop versions, will reverse its fortunes in mobile computing.
"Microsoft's future path is riding on Windows 8 and its success," Gartner Inc. (NYSE: IT) analyst David Cearley told the Associated Press. "This is a chance for Microsoft to re-establish itself in a market where it's becoming increasingly irrelevant."
Microsoft is at a critical juncture.
The Windows and Office franchises that the company was built on rely on continued growth in the PC market which has slowed in recent years.
This stagnation in the PC market has hurt Windows sales. Revenue from the Windows division was down 6% in the December quarter - the fourth time in the past five quarters that revenue from Windows has declined year-over-year.
Meanwhile, Apple has become the most valuable company in the world on the strength of its iPhone and iPad businesses.
Unless Windows 8 can establish a strong presence in mobile computing, Microsoft risks getting left on the sidelines of tech - still moderately successful, but with little chance for growth and waning influence.
To continue reading, please click here... -
If I'm an Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Investor, I Want a Dividend
Now that their stock is up more than 20-fold in the last ten years, Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) investors have had a wonderful ride.
On top of that the company has amassed a $97.5 billion cash hoard that would be the envy of any small nation.
However, as a dispassionate observer with experience of past such glorious valuations, I will tell you: If I were an Apple shareholder I'd want a cash dividend.
In fact, I think investors should certainly demand payout of at least three quarters of that cash hoard.
Simply put, a dividend is the best way for Apple shareholders to get real value out of their investment.
Here's why.
If Apple decided to pay out a $25 billion dividend per annum, allowing shareholders to benefit directly from the company's profits, it would be less likely to diversify unwisely in the future.
By receiving such a dividend, Apple shareholders would find their capital value preserved and their income increased.
However, the temptation of the $97.5 billion cash hoard would remain and management would still dream of the $100 billion acquisition that could revolutionize Apple's prospects.
That's why besides an annual dividend of $15-$20 billion (giving a 3.75%-5% yield on a $400 billion capitalization), shareholders should demand that the cash hoard itself, or the great bulk of it, be paid out to them, by a special dividend of maybe $100 per share.
By doing that, the diversification risk would be removed, and Apple would retain only enough earnings to guard against the onset of recession.
The Larger Case for an Apple Dividend
But that's not the only reason why Apple should do the right thing and start paying a dividend.
To continue reading, please click here… -
The Three Innovations That Will Make Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) the First $1 Trillion Company
Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) has the potential to be the first company ever to reach $1 trillion in market capitalization.
And I believe it will in a relatively short order - but it won't be easy.
Apple took the most valuable company crown from Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) in January after stunning December quarter results sent the stock soaring. Yesterday (Wednesday), AAPL's market cap crossed $500 billion.
As Apple's valuation has climbed, fueled by a five-year average annual growth rate of 59%, more people have started throwing the t-word around - as in trillion.
"Apple's a no-brainer to me to hit a $1 trillion-dollar market cap within the next year," James Altucher, managing director of Formula Capital, said on CNBC's "Fast Money" recently.
The record for market cap is just over $650 billion, achieved briefly by Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) at the peak of the dotcom bubble in early 2000.
Only a handful of companies have made it to the $500 billion club, and membership has been fleeting.
The list includes Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) and General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) - all during the 1999-2000 market peak. The last company to breach the $500 billion mark was Exxon Mobil in 1997.
One factor in Apple's favor is that it has risen to its current lofty levels not riding a bubble but despite a recession. And the markets for its existing products, such as the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac, still have room to grow.
"The reason Apple has been able to continue growing at a spectacular rate, even as its revenue base has surpassed $100 billion, is because it targets the world's biggest markets," Robert Cihra, an analyst at Evercore Partners, told The New York Times. "The simple fact is that they still have a small share of huge markets - single-digit shares in both PCs and mobile phones."
Naturally, getting to $1,000 a share and a $1 trillion market cap will require the addition of new sources of revenue, as well as sustaining growth in existing markets.
However, Apple already has head start with at least three cutting edge innovations...
To continue reading, please click here...
