10K came out a few minutes ago... and apple issued another 23 million options, representing about another 6% of the company given away...
and guess what, they didn't repurchase a single share.... not one bit of the company was given back to you shareholders.... worse, the stock is and was as cheap as it could ever get with these fundamentals, meaning that the company is wasting money by buying back at higher prices than they could get.... if they ever buy back more shares....
they are doing the number one killer of an investor, buying too high....
the good news is that those option grants are all at pretty high prices, so they will not affect an investment in this stock until the stock gets to about $17-$18 a share..... but this 16% overhang is now going to put a heavy lid on the stock, one that will be increadible to lift....
of the 109.430 million options outstanding, 103.758 million were granted in the last three years.... (nearly a third of the company given away) well more accurately tried to give away, but everytime they do it, it drives the stock down further so that nearly every single one of those options granted in the last three years is "worthless".... that is the good news...
the bad news is that something happened to the board of directors three years ago... they started copying MSFT, this board could careless about the shareholder... it has proven that by trying to give 1/3 of the company away, and not buying back ANY shares that would benefit a shareholder over the last year....
something is not right and you owners need to ban together and tell this management that something stinks.....
footnote: by "worthless" i mean an investor looking for normal 20% gains from this price of $14 need not worry about them until the stock hits about $17.5 to $19.9 when more than half of them become active and affect fundamentals again....
jon. |
