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That was a satire post on the Motley Fool message board. 

 

I wasn't able to find the text of that addendum anywhere besides that message board, or on Apple's website. Do you know where it would be?

 

Seems like fake news, or someone's sense of humor going over my head :)

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Can anyone shed some light on Apple’s comment to become ‘cash netural’ over time?

 

My guess is they mean to spend their +$100 billion net cash position, likely on stock buybacks over the next few years (3 or 4?).

 

Have they actually articulated what this means? I know on the last conference call they said they would provide an update in a few months when they announce the new dividend amount.

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Value investors are never happy with management buyback timing. There are different incentives and priorities at play.

 

Yes value investors want to retire as many shares as possible for the least amount of money. And it appears that management wants to spend as much money as they can on the fewest amount of shares.

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Yes, Luca has been pretty clear that what he means is debt = cash and investments.  Which means, over time, they will endeavor to return $130 Billion plus whatever cash they bring in through operations to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases.  If it takes them 5 years to accomplish and they average $50 Billion in owner earnings (conservative?), they would need to return around $75 Billion per year to shareholders.  I would expect rising cash dividends and continued repurchases.  Who knows what they were thinking in December.  I don't think they should try to time the market, which is what I feel like they attempted.  They knew the market was going to be upset that they were off on their guidance.  Maybe Apple management really got spooked in December?

 

Can anyone shed some light on Apple’s comment to become ‘cash netural’ over time?

 

My guess is they mean to spend their +$100 billion net cash position, likely on stock buybacks over the next few years (3 or 4?).

 

Have they actually articulated what this means? I know on the last conference call they said they would provide an update in a few months when they announce the new dividend amount.

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I must say, that I'm gradually developing a perception of the whole situation with AAPL and its earnings miss for AAPL 2019Q1 variant to the perception in general expressed here in this topic on CoBF.

 

I'll not at this stage express it in a tangible way, because I'm not convinced yet - I still need to trawl through some highly valuable and much appreciated posts by gfc [<- at least to me] in the Berkshire forum about market regulation for and related to buybacks.

 

I'll just post a non-rethoric question here, and my personal [so far] interim answer here:

 

Q: What would be worse than an earnings miss?

 

My personal A: An earnings miss, combined with a following SEC investigation into AAPL, based on suspicion/allegations of improper & non-timely handling of price sensitive information to the market.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Attached is a screen shot of the buyback info from AAPL 2019Q1 in the 10-Q and a comparison of the information in the 8-K profit warning of the actual and later released 10-Q. What does that make you think has been going on inside AAPL in the last quarter of the calendar year 2018?

AAPL_-_Specification_of_share_repurchases_in_2019Q1_10-Q_-_20190201.PNG.c3d0e255a32a5decf00872156729df1e.PNG

AAPL_-_Comparison_of_Press_Release_20190102_and_2019Q1_10-Q_-_20190201.pdf

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I must say, that I'm gradually developing a perception of the whole situation with AAPL and its earnings miss for AAPL 2019Q1 variant to the perception in general expressed here in this topic on CoBF.

 

I'll not at this stage express it in a tangible way, because I'm not convinced yet - I still need to trawl through some highly valuable and much appreciated posts by gfc [<- at least to me] in the Berkshire forum about market regulation for and related to buybacks.

 

I'll just post a non-rethoric question here, and my personal [so far] interim answer here:

 

Q: What would be worse than an earnings miss?

 

My personal A: An earnings miss, combined with a following SEC investigation into AAPL, based on suspicion/allegations of improper & non-timely handling of price sensitive information to the market.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Attached is a screen shot of the buyback info from AAPL 2019Q1 in the 10-Q and a comparison of the information in the 8-K profit warning of the actual and later released 10-Q. What does that make you think has been going on inside AAPL in the last quarter of the calendar year 2018?

 

I don`t fully understand why you assume an investigation by the SEC?

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I have zero idea what she did or didn't accomplish for the company and its retail business - but she certainly was expensive!

 

I'd count Angela Ahrendts as another poorly considered hundred-million dollar acquisition that has done essentially nothing for the company.

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It always struck me as a bizzare, vanity-driven (and maybe political/optic-guided) decision. You took somebody who was used to generating maybe (~6 million per store??) in low-traffic sales with absolutely no post-sales support burden and put them into an operation that is maybe 10x larger by store revenue, 20x larger by total sales, probably 100x larger by store traffic, and is essentially 50% a tech-support operation by headcount.

 

It's a bit unfair to simply observe that the Apple Store reputation for "good service" has been diminished greatly over the past 5+ years. I mean, it's obviously true, but to some extent it would have required almost magical execution to hold the line on that reputation in the facte of significant sales growth and increasing product-line diversity/complexity. But that said, I don't think there's a single positive thing that can be said about the Angela period of the retail operation, except that it provided them with the Presentation Diversity they are so transparently thirsty for.

 

The fact that the replacement is being filled by the head of HR is not especially promising, but whatever.

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It always struck me as a bizzare, vanity-driven (and maybe political/optic-guided) decision. You took somebody who was used to generating maybe (~6 million per store??) in low-traffic sales with absolutely no post-sales support burden and put them into an operation that is maybe 10x larger by store revenuem, 20x larger by total sales, probably 100x larger by body count, and is essentially 50% a tech-support operation by headcount.

 

It's a bit unfair to simply observe that the Apple Store reputation for "good service" has been diminished greatly over the past 5+ years. I mean, it's obviously true, but to some extent it would have required almost magical execution to hold the line on that reputation in the fact of significant sales growth and increasing product-line diversity/complexity. But that said, I don't think there's a single positive thing that can be said about the Angela period of the retail operation, except that it provided them with the Presentation Diversity they are so transparently thirsty for.

 

The fact that the replacement is being filled by the head of HR is not especially promising, but whatever.

 

She added in store coat racks.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Apple has also trimmed 200 staffers from its autonomous-vehicle project, and is redirecting much of the engineering resources in its services business, led by Eddy Cue, into efforts around Hollywood programming.

 

It delights me to imagine 200 LIDAR nerds being reassigned to cold-calling 10,000 actresses for Eddie Cue to have lunch with.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

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