Here’s an idea: let’s cut Apple in half. Sure, the company is the most profitable on the planet and grabs more headlines than the U.S. President. The trouble, according to some on Wall Street, is Apple isn’t acquiring and selling enough to earn financial wizards hefty commission checks.
The thinking behind this notion being floated on Wall Street is that Apple could become even more valuable than its current $346 billion if the tech giant split its Mac hardware business and its iOS/iCloud offerings into two units. Motorola did something similar, splitting its hardware and cell phone businesses. Google recently acquired Motorola Mobility, the unit that has created so many Android-based smartphones.
Unlike Motorola and others that have split off units, Apple is almost averse to acquisitions. Indeed, over the past decade, the Cupertino, Calif. firm has spent just $1 billion on acquisitions, averaging 15 times less than its rivals. The key is acquisitions. Wall Street money managers only get paid when they assist companies splitting up or acquiring others. In other words, Apple has been great for consumers and small investors, but not much of a gravy train for big-time Wall Streeters.
While such a split-up would never happen when its co-founder also held the CEO reigns, the possibility is given more life under Tim Cook. UBS analyst Maynard Um suggested Apple could also buy back shares, something “generally more of a possibility with management change.”
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.
47 responses to “Wall Street: Cut Apple in Half and Write Us Some Commission Checks”
fuck wall street! apple needs to stay its course and not worry about the already über rich….becoming richer!
Wall Street is the single most impediment to innovation and is run by greedy jerks. They would pimp their mothers, sisters and daughters to make money.Â
Of course UBS is one of the worst companies out there. But they are all greedy mother…rs.
I just hope that Tim Cook does not do something stupid like this.
You must be high.  Why would Apple care about Wall Street wallets?  When are people going to realize that Apple already knows how to run its business better than anyone.  Who are we to tell them what to do?
Once a company starts working for the shareholders instead of the customers, its all downhill from there.
Good, those greedy jerks don’t deserve a dime…Â
Good, those greedy jerks don’t deserve a dime…Â
This is just big-money-players trying to sway the new CEO into doing what they want. They’re testing the new water to see if it’s safe or not. They want to know exactly how hard they can grab him by the balls. Chances are it won’t work.
@ Derek-because Wall Street is full of blood suckers! I hope Tim Cook follows Steve Jobs lead and tells Wall Street to go fuck themselves. The nerve! Oh, you’re a multibillion dollar company but we think it would be better if you let us handle some of that money. You’re right Derek they are definitely high. Where were these “wizards” when Apple was in the toilet and about to file bankruptcy? NO WHERE, that’s where! I pray that the next financial crisis that comes along all you blood suckers crash and burn-you make your money the sleazy way, off the backs of working people. SCUM BAGS!!!
And now we know why these guys don’t run Apple, don’t we?
Wow.
How do you say, “Go fuck yourselves” in Wall Street Douche vernacular?
I’m about 101% sure that you have nothing to worry about. The company will never be split up in this manner.
That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day, esp with the eventual merging of OS X and iOS. Shows you wall street has no clue what they’re talking about. They’re just money hungry bastards.
Who exactly is saying this? Â I’ve never heard anyone mention this nor seen it in any of the sell-side reports?
That is pretty much how you say it!
“Good Morning”.
Screw you, Wall Street. Be thankful the lot of you aren’t in jail for our current economic and political environment.Â
WallStreet analysts are funny! They think they can babel to a few journalists & investors will react the way they want them too! Ya right! That only happens at the “reactionary” companies like RIM or Microsoft! NO one invested in Apple is thinking this way! If you want money from Apple’s stocks….sell them!! What part of “Apple won’t change!!!” do these analysts understand?!!
The analyst must be real clueless then. If they payed attention to Apple for even a second, they’d know Tim Cook has been running the companies operations for almost 3-years, off & on. Most of the way Apple operates is due to him.
This makes no sense from a programmer’s perspective. Â A major part of the reason iOS has been successful is because a huge chunk of it’s codebase was pulled directly from OSX which borrowed a lot from NEXT. Â This old code has been optimized and bug-tested for over a decade and is one of the reasons that iOS is so stable and has such fantastic battery life. Â Divorcing the platforms from each other makes no sense at all, will create buggier code, duplicate a lot of the work, create more inconsistencies between the platforms and will result in a corporate climate that has really crippled Microsoft (where divisions compete so fiercely with each other that they hamstring potentially great products).
hah, just keep in mind that the steve is still actually in charge, and would smack down tim from his chairman’s seat ;)
All companies do and should work for their shareholders. But these aren’t shareholders. They are analysts and brokers.
Doesn’t have to. They are part of The Collective. They think as one mind. Resistance is futile
Given the talk of merging Mac OS and iOS into one system . . .
Snore.
a) Companies do what Wall Street wants when they’re failing. AAPL is not failing.b) Motorola did not split “its hardware and cell phone businesses,” rather it split along business lines – infrastructure-based (Motorola Solutions) vs consumer-oriented (Motorola Mobility) businesses. Note that after the split, one of them has improved its value and the other, well, was acquired at a wildly inflated price.
Finally, as an example of point a), note that Motorola wasn’t exactly climbing up the charts as the unified company, and their principal single shareholder wanted to “unlock shareholder value.” [Hint to those of you keeping score at home: when Wall Street people say the phrase “unlock shareholder value,” that typically means “sell off stuff so I can make some mo-nay at your expense”]
There won’t be any shares if the company doesn’t make the customer #1. Â Most shareholders don’t know how to run a company, they just want the money.