Apple Stock Price Tank...

[Apple Corps]

What in the hell is going on??? Many of the "analyst" have a price target on Apple of $200 - $250 a share. Organic revenue growth and profit are all positive. The pipeline has been strong and the outlook is also strong.

The concern over Steve's health, mobileme rollout, last half margin decline due to new products have an impact - but:

The damn stuff has tanked 20% from its high of around $200 on good news - and this is NOT a day to day issue - this trend has been underway.

What are all of you thinking - large investor manipulation? Rocky road ahead for Apple specific?

 

[hexonxonx]

I don't think this drop has anything to do with Apple in any part today. The whole market is unstable and is down.

 

[WildCowboy]

Apple is a volatile stock, and a lot of people have unreasonable expectations for them. Lots of products are in need of an update, and everybody wants their favorite product to be updated at tomorrow's event. As speculation has trickled out that it's a music-only event, a lot of people have been underwhelmed and the stock has sagged as a result. Of course, anyone who knows anything about Apple could have guessed a long time ago that this would be a music-only event.

Apple frequently dips after product announcements, and we saw that after MWSF back in January. A couple of concerning aspects in subsequent earnings releases also contributed to the drop. But it rebounded nicely from March to May as the WWDC/iPhone 3G hype built to a frenzy. But as usual, the hype outweighed the reality, and things sank again. That's just the way things go with Apple. If you've got AAPL stock, there's certainly money to made over both the short-term and long-term in many cases, but you have to be willing to ride the roller-coaster.

 

[rdowns]

There were more stories alluding to Steve Jobs health in the financial press today. Hopefully, he will take the stage tomorrow and put this all to rest.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

It seems that there may be a number of issues, here. Obviously, the first is the current recession/market upset, where banks are falling like ninepins, credit is squeezed and confidence a bit battered. Then, there is the traditional volatility of Apple stocks, which is not helped by the rumours (real, imagined, feared, but not convincingly refuted until Steve Jobs takes the stage and addresses it all himself) concerning Mr Jobs's health; lastly, as pointed out by Wildcowboy, the fact that "rumours" (again), or hints, straws in the wind, or educated guesses, all appear to suggest that tomorrow's event will be confined to "music" matters, has annoyed the market, which seems to have been expecting more than that. Only a few more weeks, then, and we can expect the fever of anticipation to start all over again.
Cheers

 

[trule]

What in the hell is going on??? Many of the "analyst" have a price target on Apple of $200 - $250 a share. Organic revenue growth and profit are all positive. The pipeline has been strong and the outlook is also strong.

The concern over Steve's health, mobileme rollout, last half margin decline due to new products have an impact - but:

The damn stuff has tanked 20% from its high of around $200 on good news - and this is NOT a day to day issue - this trend has been underway.

If things are perfect as you say, then from here on in...then they can only get worse. And the stock market is generally forward looking.

Looking at a 5 year trend the price has increased 10 fold, more or less parabolic until it started correcting. The pattern looks like a distribution, thats where big money sells on price rallies to people like us. Once they finish we will probably have a major correction.

Still, if you bought it 5 years back, and sold now, you would be looking pretty smart. If you held then there is a chance you will end up looking stupid....but I imagine most people here are "buy and hold", after all thats what everyone says to do, and everyone can't be wrong can he?

 

[Apple Corps]

Understand all the response thus far - have quite a lot of Apple stock and have done well.

That said - $250 price targets - generally good news - and continuing price drops based on what??

When (if) Apple pens a deal with China Mobile they will have access to 420,000,000 new customers - larger than the entire U.S. population.

Vista continues to have serious acceptance issues, Apple is now growing in the enterprise space with corporate America,.......

 

[gotzero]

I think Apple stock is overvalued. The stats are crazy compared to the rest of the industry.

If it drops below about $120 I will probably go long in it thinking that speculation will run it up again.

 

[Apple Corps]

Food for thought:

The price earnings multiple (P/E) is an increasingly useless metric when valuing Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) stock price. The reason why is that Apple now uses subscription accounting. Therefore, Apple recognizes the sales and earnings of certain products such as the iPhone, Apple TV, Apple Care and others over a twenty-four month time frame. By deferring its sales and earnings on significant products, Apple’s understates the health of its business.
The truth about Apple’s health can no longer be found in its earnings report. The truth resides on the balance sheet by calculating the change in cash. We define “cash” as the sum of cash and cash equivalents plus short-term investments. This is the same way that Apple itself reports cash.
The recent example of Apple earnings report (see conference call transcript) totally exposes how useless the price earnings multiple has become, as it relates to valuing Apple’s stock. Apple recently reported earnings of $4.6 billion for the twelve months ending June 30, 2008. Apple reported cash generated in the same twelve month period of $7.0 billion.

 

[Trajectory]

There are many things affecting this:

* Publicity of iPhone defects.
* Day after new product launches.
* The whole market is still a rollercoaster.
* Steve still looks unwell.
* Recent huge screwups with iPhone OS and MobileMe.

Apple has been making a lot of fumbles lately, which leads me to believe that Steve is possibly not as involved in the day-to-day at Apple as he used to be.

 

[Apple Corps]

Trajectory - Steve is certainly NOT as involved - the company has grown dramatically and there are so so many new things out. Most of the listed problems were software and poor pre-launch testing - IT Ops has never been a strong section of Apple.

It is a roller coaster for sure..............