Steve Jobs’ latest medical leave of absence was announced one day before Apple scheduled their fiscal Q1 earnings result… which in and of itself had been scheduled during a strange period, given the scheduling history of such calls.
That was no accident, of course, but an interesting post by Andy Zaky over at the Seeking Alpha blog reveals not only the reason behind the timing, but shows that Apple and Steve Jobs had been planning this for well over a month, if not longer.
Zaky explains:
Since 2007, Apple has always chosen to report earnings during the last week of the month in order to avoid the manipulation that usually comes with options expiration week. If you go back at least 14-16 quarters, Apple has reported during the last week of the month in every one of those reporting periods. I remember that it started doing this in response to reports of complaints of share manipulation during OPX.
But now that we have the Steve Jobs news, the reporting date makes a whole lot of sense. Moreover, the fact that Apple chose to release its earnings right after a 3-day weekend in order to give investors time to soak in the news of Jobs’ indefinite departure lends support to the idea that Steve Jobs has been planing to take a leave for a very long time. At a minimum, plans must have been drawn at least since mid-December and maybe even earlier./blockquote>
Sounds about right to us, and it also emphasizes that Steve’s leave of absence wasn’t a sudden thing: he’s been getting more ill for a while now, which explains — amongst other things — why he didn’t make an appearance at the Verizon iPhone event.
