Wall Street analysts are blaming a relatively-unknown for Apple stock dipping 4.6 percent Wednesday. Following yesterday’s downgrade of Apple by JMP Securities on concerns over a slowdown at supplier Foxconn, another Apple-watcher replied any link with Apple’s health is a coincidence.
“Apple’s contribution to Han Hai (which uses the trade name Foxconn) is limited,” Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner told investors Wednesday. “The correlation between Apple and Hon Hai’s revenue therefore appears to be a product of coincidence more than causality,” the analyst wrote.
Noting JMP Securities’ Alex Guana has been way off the mark in predicting Apple’s quarterly announcements, Fortune blasted the analyst. “He really distinguished himself Wednesday by downgrading Apple and casting aspersions on its product sales even as customers were still (five days after launch) lining up outside Apple Stores in the early morning hours to buy the latest iPad.” JMP Securities’ downgrade of Apple was the first since October.
Guana had written that Foxconn growth had been sliding, a possible signal of product change by Apple. Reiner noted revenue from Apple comprises just 21 percent of Foxconn’s income, a percentage the Oppenheimer expert described as “a relatively modest portion.”
[AppleInsider, Fortune, Bloomberg]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
6 responses to “Foxconn Slowdown Link to Apple Called Just a ‘Coincidence’”
@ ED Sutherland
It would have been nice if you had put this “analysis” in some kind of context yesterday before posting this http://www.cultofmac.com/foxco…. It’s not like the guy is a regular spot-on analyst. Heck if an AAPL bull like Munster had made this kind of claim then it would deserve our collective attention but Guana?
If this whole Disqus thing wasn’t such a pain, I would have posted this to the original article yesterday.
Guana is a burner. A nobody working for a year at a securities company you’ve never heard of before, putting out analysis on a company that doesn’t need to be accurate since nobody pays attention to him.
Then when the gameplan is launched, you pressure him to say what makes you the most money. In this case, it was that AAPL was going to fail to beat their own EPS guidance, based on a completely different company’s performance. Start the stock manipulation games, make obscene money at the expense of bewildered mom & pop investors. When the backlash occurs, toss him aside like a kleenex and count your profits.
Guana’s head is reeling right now from his 15min of fame. But he’s going to have trouble landing a better job in future. This makes it all the easier to lean on him again for some “help” in your next stock scam.
Please don’t get sucked into doing their work for them. You may mean well, but if the wires are full of an analyst you’ve never heard of, then it’s a scam in play. The best thing you can do is either not mention it, or if you do, stress that nobody’s ever heard of the guy before.
Credit Suisse just opened coverage of AAPL, with a target price of $500, publishing a 17 page report full of numbers and projections about the company called Apple. Where’s the piece on that to balance out the FUD yesterday?
Guano on Guana