Larry probably won't reply as his last posting was in 1999, so I'll chime in.
Is the market so boring, is the news so thin, is AAPL's market place so secure that all this thread can do is talk about Jobs' successor?
Yes for the moment.
Has Jobs announced his retirement?
Not as far as I know, but there was the cancer scare last year.
Do we have reason to believe his departure is eminent? If not, then the discussion is superfluous, if not fatuous.
Again, not as far as anything mentioned. What triggered this thread was a pseudonews article on bloggingstocks.com.
Message 22898209
Although no imminent departure is expected, it's always prudent to examine the risk involved with key personel and what succession plans are in place. Apple more than typical companies has two bigger risks. One is that the CEO is more visible and critical than the typical CEO and two is that the secrecy behind the company hides analysis of the probably results in such an event.
Would it not be much more cogent to speculate on the imminent earnings report? And the potential for upside/downside movement predicated thereon?
Another relevant topic worthy of discussion. Shares the same speculative nature as the succession topic, which makes it more likely to get too far off topic. Thanks for the reminder to try to stay on topic.
How much of an upside surprise would it take to move the stock five points? What happens if AAPL fails to meet/meets/beats earnings estimates, and what is most likely? If AAPL falls back after beating estimates, would that begin a trend, or represent a buying opportunity?
In my opinion, Apple needs to meet sales/earnings to remain above $70. Apple's been pricing to increase earnings (refresh iPod, keeping prices relatively high), so the sales may actually be slightly lower, but the EPS should beat by a few pennies. Just meeting targets will likely see sell off below $70. The sell-off will appear larger if there is a run-up leading to earnings. If EPS beat by 8 cents or more, it could support pricing above 80. Tempering all this is the outlook on Q4, which will likely be conservative as usual. There is serious risk of overbuilding and underbuilding this season, especially in the iPods. Last year, they couldn't meet demand and left money on the table. This year, hitting the happy medium is tripply hard (increasing or decreasing demand?, increased mp3 and cell phone competition, and desire to "build enough").
Is it better to carry over unfilled demand to the new year or unsold inventory? Last year there was a high unfilled demand carried over, but I'm afraid this year will be an inventory carryover. |
