Apple Inc (AAPL)

Everyone is in love with it because of what it did in the past. There have been only moderate innovations since Steve Jobs passed away. He does not see where future growth is going to come from.

(Market Call Minute.) He likes this. The IOS ecosystem has so much more value. It’s cheap.

(A Top Pick Aug 14/15. Down 12.54%.) This has struggled over the last year, but he still likes the name, and is buying it. Has a lot of cash. The best they can do is to beef up the dividend to 3%-3.5%.

Warren Buffet Bought it. They own the ecosystem of phone and iPad and so on. Even if it is a consumer products company you only need 15 times PE to reach their target. They think it will be more of a trading stock. An Apple Car would signify a new growth phase.

The stock has been pulling back. Smart phone penetration in developed markets is already very high. In the emerging markets, where there is more competition, there are very little phone subsidies. Their phones are quite expensive, so they are not seeing the pickup in demand there. Next quarter might be a bit soft. The catalyst may be when their new phone comes out next year. This is transitioning from a growth company to more of a value stock.

Temporarily broken or contrarian. She loves it below $100. You have a very solid company.

He got stopped out of it. They have a high ROE. He worries about how much further they can grow. It is going to be a challenge to continue growing at the old rate. Own them with a stop price in mind. He does not own them based on technicals.

Has this as a Short. Their products are fabulous, but the bottom line is that the iPhone is everything to them, and it is in decline. Trading roughly at around 10X. Expects the stock to fall 10%-15% from here.

Much cheaper than it was a few days ago, so you can absolutely buy it here. If you are waiting for a selloff, this is it.

Sold his holdings recently at about $100. Over the last little while, has realized that iPhone sales growth is starting to wane a little. Representing 2/3 of the revenues, he believes that is a bit of an issue. Valuation wise it is still very cheap, trading at around 10 or 11 times forward earnings. Has lots of cash on the books and paying a dividend, but thinks penetration in China is not as strong as people had hoped. Also, on the next iteration of iPhones, are people going to line up and is it going to be as successful as the previous ones.

(A Top Pick June 25/15. Down 23.08%.) He is concerned with the lack of new product and the lack of change with the iPhone. It is being reported that the new iPhone is not very different than the current iPhone. Also, feels penetration in China isn’t as strong as they had hoped.

At these levels, this is a value play. We have become accustomed to thinking of this as a mega-growth story, but a lot has changed over the last few years. They’ve grown considerably in terms of their market share. When you have grown market share as quickly as they have, you are not really a growth story the way that you used to be, you are much more of a mature business. Feels it has to go through a PR exercise of communicating that to the market. One good way of doing that would be by beefing up the dividend. Dividend yield of 2.36%.

A bit conflicted on this. It is a business that is finding its way into being a mature technology company. Most mature technology companies don’t get attributed with a very high multiple on a PE basis. They have oodles of cash on their balance sheet. Have started a program of paying a dividend and increasing it. However, what is lacking is their ability to innovate the way they once did. You’ll probably have to be patient with this. Prefers others.

Thinks the Bears have it wrong on this company. The company will survive even if they had to keep selling 50 million iPhones every quarter. What is being missed is the IOS, their software ecosystem where there are probably 1 billion users worldwide right now. They are generating applications and uses of recurring revenue.

Not an expensive stock. If you take out the cash, they trade at about 8X earnings. They could increase their dividend a lot more as they have a lot of cash to do that. The trouble is, people see it as a one product stock, the iPhone, and they don’t get a substantial amount of revenue from their service side. They have to move past their phone.