"Apple’s stock bounces back to hit a new high" by Michael Liedtke | Associated Press August 21, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple’s stock touched a new high Wednesday, reflecting investors’ renewed faith in chief executive Tim Cook’s ability to outwit the competition and expand the technological hit factory built by the late Steve Jobs.
The milestone represents a dramatic turnaround in sentiment since Apple’s shares reached its previous split-adjusted peak of $100.72 in September 2012. After hitting $101.09 Wednesday afternoon, shares closed up 4 cents at $100.57. That gave Apple a market value of $602 billion — by far more than any other publicly held company.
Apple’s stock had fallen to a split-adjusted $55.01 in April 2013 to wipe out about $300 billion in shareholder wealth amid worries that the Cupertino, Calif., company had run out of ideas without Jobs as its mastermind. The anxiety escalated as sales of iPhones and iPads slowed amid the growing popularity of less expensive smartphones and tablet computers from Samsung Electronics and other rivals relying on Google’s free Android software.
Now, there are signs that Samsung’s devices are losing momentum while Apple prepares to release the next version of its iPhone this fall and investors wait for Cook to deliver on his promise to introduce a product that will open up new opportunities. The breakthrough is widely expected to be a smartwatch that will include sensors to help people monitor their health.
See: Apple Health App
Hewing to its secretive ways, Apple hasn’t provided details about its upcoming products.
Related: Cooking Up an Apple Post
Cook, though, has been raising hopes that Apple is poised to create a new product category for the first time since the iPad’s release four years ago. ‘‘We’ve got some great things that we’re working on that I’m very, very proud of and very, very excited about,’’ he told analysts in April.
Anticipation for the next iPhone already is running even higher than the usual frenetic buildup. Apple’s stock hit its previous high the last time the company increased the iPhone’s screen size.
Apple’s stock has nearly doubled since Cook became CEO, outpacing the roughly 70 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 in the same stretch.
One would almo$t $u$pect the market was rigged.
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Related:
"Apple plans to buy back an additional $30 billion of its stock, raise its quarterly dividend by 8 percent, and split its stock for the first time in nine years. The commitment announced Wednesday as part of Apple’s fiscal second-quarter earnings report expands on the company’s previous pledge to spend $60 billion on stock buybacks by the end of next year. The company is now earmarking $90 billion for buybacks during that time frame. Apple’s earnings rose 7 percent to $10.2 billion [for the quarter], an amount that exceeds what most technology companies make in an entire year....
Apple’s growth prospects are brightening as anticipation builds for the upcoming release of the next iPhone, a model that is expected to cater to consumers yearning for a bigger screen. Apple earned $7.7 billion for the three months ending June 28. That represented a 12 percent increase from income."
$econd bite at the Apple?
"Apple’s stock repurchases paying off" by Oliver Renick and Joseph Ciolli | Bloomberg News August 06, 2014
NEW YORK — With Apple’s repurchases staking a claim as the most profitable on record, buybacks remain one of America’s most popular antidotes to bears.
Sure looks like a PROPPING UP of the STOCK PRICE with all that extra ca$h!
The iPhone maker is up 25 percent since it spent $18 billion on its own shares between January and March and rallied 32 percent after a $16 billion buyback in 2013.
Those are the highest four-month returns among the 20 biggest quarterly repurchases by any company since 1998, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Standard & Poor’s.
S&P 500 constituents have spent $211 billion on their own stock this year amid concern the five-year bull market is prone to selloffs such as last week’s 2.7 percent retreat.
Apple $tarting to look a little dull.
Spurred on by zero-percent interest rates and the highest cash balances on record, companies are plowing capital into the equity market to curb supply and buttress per-share earnings.
Aren't they supposed to be creating jobs with that?
While Scott Wren of Wells Fargo Advisors says there are usually better things to do with capital, companies with the most repurchases have beat the S&P 500 during the bull market.
‘‘It’s a low-quality way to increase your earnings, and obviously I’d much rather see companies grow the business through revenue,’’ Wren, the St. Louis-based senior equity strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors, said in a phone interview. ‘‘But when the economy’s growing at 2 to 2.5 percent, you have to do what you can to keep the ball rolling.’’
Telling you that all this talk of recovery and stock markets highs is artificial illusion and bull$hit. Sorry. It's making a certain $elect $ector rich and that's it.
Indexes of US and global equities fell in July, halting a five-month streak of gains amid speculation the threat of inflation is rising in the United States while Argentina defaulted on debt and Portugal’s Banco Espirito Santo was ordered to raise capital.
See:
A $lim Middle Class in Latin America
Portugal's Proudest Bank Lo$es Spirit
So am I.
There were $159 billion of buybacks in the first quarter, the most active single three-month period since 2007, when companies spent $172 billion in the third quarter. Shares bought from April through June are on pace to reach about $130 billion, according to S&P.
Just before the crash!
Apple’s $18 billion repurchase in the first quarter and the $16 billion it spent between April and June of 2013 are the two biggest buybacks by any company in data compiled by S&P starting in 1998. They came as the stock advanced as much as 77 percent over 15 months after falling to a 16-month low in April 2013.
The return followed the weakest period for Apple shares in the last decade. After vaulting almost 900 percent from the end of 2005 through September 2012 and becoming the world’s largest company by market value, Apple plunged 44 percent in seven months amid concern about new products and competition.
‘‘Their timing was impeccable,’’ Todd Lowenstein, who helps manage $16 billion at Highmark Capital Management in Los Angeles, said in a July 31 phone interview. ‘‘They went in big, and it said to the market that they had confidence in their business plan and thought their stock was grossly undervalued. That’s worked out well for them.’’
Companies spending the most on their own stock are outperforming the S&P 500. The 100 firms with biggest buybacks relative to market value have gained 5.5 percent this year, compared with a 4.9 percent increase in the benchmark index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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Uh-oh. Found a bruised spot:
"Apple lacks diversity in its tech jobs" by Michael Liedtke | Associated Press August 13, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple primarily relies on white and Asian men for its top-paying technology jobs, feeding the perception that Silicon Valley’s economic boom is largely excluding women, blacks, and Hispanics.
See: Homeless in Silicon Valley
A breakdown released Tuesday by Apple Inc. showed that 54 percent of the company’s technology jobs in the United States are filled by whites and another 23 percent by Asians. Men make up 80 percent of Apple’s technology workforce throughout the world. The iPhone and iPad maker did not provide racial statistics for its global workforce of 98,000 employees.
Apple’s technological tilt toward white and Asian men is similar to situations previously disclosed during the past three months by other major Silicon Valley companies, including Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., and LinkedIn Corp.
Apple, the world’s most valuable company, has the largest workforce among that group. A significant chunk of Apple’s $575 billion market value has enriched Apple programmers and other technology workers who received stock options to supplement their salaries, which routinely exceed $100,000.
The tech companies have been sharing the demographic data that they compile for the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under pressure from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow PUSH coalition. Jackson has been focusing on the tech companies because the industry has become a catalyst for new jobs and wealth as consumers buy more gadgets and spend more time immersed in digital services.
Are we?
See: Many still on sidelines of digital revolution
Jackson then moved to Missouri.
Like its peers, Apple acknowledged its workforce is not as diverse as it should be. Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, expressed his disappointment in a letter posted alongside the company’s data. Lower-level executives of the other tech companies had addressed diversity when they disclosed the compositions of their workforces.
‘‘Let me say up front: As CEO, I’m not satisfied with the numbers on this page,’’ Cook wrote. ‘‘They’re not new to us, and we’ve been working hard for quite some time to improve them.’’
Jackson said he called Cook Tuesday to congratulate him for ‘‘stepping up to the plate’’ to discuss the data. ‘‘It shows his personal commitment and his leadership,’’ Jackson said in a statement. ‘‘I urge him to take further bold steps to make Apple better, and leverage his leadership to make the whole industry better.’’
Apple has been an outspoken champion for diversity since Cook succeeded the late Steve Jobs as chief executive nearly three years ago.
Jobs died from cancer after he rejected government attempts to establish trapdoors in the products. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
The company has trumpeted the phrase, ‘‘Inclusion inspires innovation,’’ as a rallying cry. Cook has reinforced that message on his Twitter account during the past two months with periodic posts supporting gay rights in the workplace.
As chief executive, Cook also promoted Cuban-American Eddy Cue to Apple’s executive team and hired a woman, Angela Ahrendts, to oversee its stores. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company also added a second woman, Sue Wagner, to its eight-person board of directors last month. Even with those moves, 72 percent of Apple’s leadership is made up of men.
Including nontech jobs, Apple appears to be doing a slightly better job employing blacks and Hispanics than its peers. That may have to do with the thousands of sales jobs at its 427 stores around the world, including 254 US locations. Overall, 11 percent of the employees in Apple’s US workforce are Hispanic and 7 percent are black. By comparison, 3 percent of Google’s US workers are Hispanic and 2 percent are black. At Facebook, 4 percent of US workers are Hispanic and 2 percent are black.
Technology executives have generally traced the scarcity of women, blacks, and Hispanics in computer programming and engineering to flaws in the US education system. Apple, Google, and others are financing efforts to steer more women and minorities to math and science in high school.
And the H1-Bs.
A shortage of qualified women and minority candidates for technology jobs explains some, but not all, of the industry’s bias toward white and Asian men, said Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at Stanford University’s Clayman Institute and author of a new book called ‘‘Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times.’’ She thinks most tech companies have not done enough to attract women and minorities or make the field more welcoming.
‘‘The tech boom has been something to behold in terms of being an economic engine, but more people need to be brought along that ride,’’ Cooper said.
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Related:
Bad Apple Avoids Taxes
An Apple For Lunch
An Apple a Day the Globe Way
It's all brown.
NEXT DAY UPDATE: Apple loses bid to block sales of Samsung phones
