To all: finally AAPL starts to get some recognition in Wall Street
with this upgrade from Goldman Sachs. Given the extreme skepticism from other brokerage houses we should expect a gradual shift in opinion from the same in the next few weeks. One key aspect of AAPL expected success, blindly denied in Wall Street, is its great overseas potential. Let's not forget a) 50% of revenues during last quarter came from overseas (this was not even mentioned in the recent
brokerage reports such as MStanley's); b) Asia and, to a certain extent, Western Europe are on the recovery path; c) personal computer sales are growing strongly in Asia and Western Europe: in Japan sales
jumped 67% by unit and 71% by value on the week ended April 11 (from the same period last year) [source: Nikkei Market Access/Bloomberg];
in Europe sales grew 20.5% in the first quarter of 1999 versus last year {source: Context/Bloomberg].
AAPL continues offering compelling, solid value. As of today, here it
is how it stands versus PC boxmakers:
99 P/E: AAPL 15.7X vs CPQ 21.3X, DELL 60.2X, GTW 21X, HWP 21X, IBM 28.3X
Price/Book Value: AAPL 3.5X vs CPQ 3.6X, DELL 57.1X [NO TYPO], GTW 8.5X, HWP 4.7X, IBM 10.2X
Coming events (Worldwide Developer Conference, Macworld NY Expo)
should add additional momentum. |
