Google stock has risen 13% today, surpassing $1,000 for the first time ever. It comes a day after the search giant announced its earnings for last quarter, which beat Wall Street expectations thanks to a surge in mobile and video advertising that helped increase quarterly revenue by 23%.
Carl Icahn finally got his dinner date wish with Tim Cook last night, after the famous billionaire investor took to Twitter a few weeks ago to preach how Wall Street has seriously undervalued AAPL stock. Along with parading his optimism for Apple’s stock, Icahn purchased a major stake in AAPL stock and has been dying for Cupertino to issue more buybacks.
Apple may not be snapping up big companies all over the place like Yahoo!, but it is buying lots of shares in one major corporation — itself. Last quarter, the Cupertino company spent $16 billion on 36 million of its own shares, which cost, on average, just over $444 apiece.
Apple finally allows us to put the Newsstand icon in a folder in iOS 7, but wouldn’t it be great if we could completely hide all the built-in apps we don’t use? Thanks to a glitch in the latest iOS 7 beta, you can. After following a few simple steps, you can remove stock icons from your home screen so that they’re nowhere to be seen.
Despite increasing competition from the likes of Samsung and Google, Apple continues to be the world’s most valuable brand, according to the latest annual BrandZ report from Millward Brown.
The Cupertino company was one of three technology firms in the top five, with Google and IBM placed in second and third respectively.
Despite having a mountain of cash overseas, Apple has decided it’d be cheaper for the company to go into debt for its stock buyback program, rather than bring the money back to the U.S. to be taxed.
After taking the initial steps yesterday toward offering bonds to investors, Apple opened up its order book today and plans to sell $17 billion worth of bonds. The six-part all dollar offering has already attracted more than $50 billion of orders within the first few hours, in what has become the largest non-bank bond deal in history.
According to a report from Reuters, Apple is offering $17 billion worth of bonds in the following six bond types to investors:
Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov has revealed that he recently spent $100 million on Apple shares in anticipation that they will rebound. The 59-year-old believes that Apple is a “very promising” investment, despite the current share price being almost 40% off its peak last September.
Last week, Apple announced its plans to return $100 billion in stock to investors over the next few years. The increase more than doubled Apple’s original capital return program of $45 billion. Quarterly dividend payments also increased 15%, or $3.05 per common share.
Apple may have a huge cash pile, but even the world’s most valuable company will have to go into debt to finance a return program of this size. It’s the first time Apple has borrowed since 1996.
Apple just released its Q2 2013 Financial results, and even though Apple beat its own estimates, Tim Cook started the Quarterly Financial Call on the defensive.
Cook started the call by explaining how exceptional Apple’s 2012 financial results were for Apple, so it’s hard for the company to improve sales this quarter. Then Cook commented on Apple’s struggling stock price by saying he’s “very frustrated” with the stock’s declining value the last few quarters, but they’re staying focused on the future.
Hoping to appease investors, Apple announced today that it will payback $100 billion to investors by 2015. Apple has yet to release a major product in 2013, but Cook reassured investors that Apple can’t wait to release new hardware and software this Fall and throughout 2014.
I’ve been writing for Cult of Mac for almost three years now, and in that time I’ve covered some pretty farfetched Apple rumors. But the latest from Forbes comes with a whole new level of crazy.
“Some Wall Street sources close to some Apple executives” say the Cupertino company could be searching for a replacement for Tim Cook, it claims, before suggesting Cook could turn Apple into another Hewlett-Packard or JC Penney and insisting “Apple’s shine has faded” since the passing of Steve Jobs.
Earlier today, we reported that the Wall Street consensus was that Apple’s profit in this last quarter probably shrank for the first time in a decade, and that results will be even more dire next quarter, with iPhone sales units being extremely low.
But Wall Street’s pessimism in regards to Apple is, as usual, nuts. For Apple to perform as low as Wall Street thinks it will next quarter, Apple would have to show zero growth in the iPhone market compared to the same spring quarter a year ago. This would rank it as one of the smartphone industry’s worst disasters ever. Which is crazy, because Apple’s selling more iPhones than ever.
Apple’s share price may be falling quickly at the moment, but company co-founder Steve Wozniak is confident it’ll rise again thanks to future products that will “surprise and shock us all.” Speaking at the Login technology conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, Woz said “the stock price is a little low right now,” but notes that industry profits “are still with Apple.”
Last year it seemed like there was no end in sight for the rise of Apple’s stock price. Then things started to slip in October thanks to Apple Maps and the management shakeup, and it’s been all downhill from there.
Earlier this morning Apple shares were trading below $400 for the first time in over 16 months, as the stock has continued to slide from its high point of over $700 per share that it enjoyed just last year.
Securities trader David Miller has pleaded guilty to fraud after buying $1 billion of Apple stock without permission and bringing down his company. The 40-year-old purchased 1.625 million Apple shares on the day the Cupertino company reported its third-quarter results in October 2012, hoping that he’d be able to make a profit when the share price rose.
Instead, the share price fell and Miller’s gamble backfired, sending Rochdale Securities under.
Chief investment officer of Gamco Investors, Howard Ward, today said that Apple is planning to reveal its plans for what to do with the enormous amount of cash by next month. Apple needs to respond to growing criticism over what it’s doing with its $137.1 billion in cash and investments, not to mention the $42 billion in earnings investors expect Apple to add in 2013, says Ward.
This week on The CultCast—finally—it’s time to talk iPhone 5S and iPad 5! We’ll tell you why April and August might be bringing you the tasty new iDevices, and if they’ll be drastically different than the models we’ve already got.
Then, is Apple is a innovation lull? Ex-Apple CEO John Scully thinks so. We’ll tell you what we think is really going on.
Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes to download our newest episode, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
Show notes up next!
Famed investor and philanthropist Warren Buffet stopped by CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning, and the Berkshire Hathaway head had some interesting thoughts on what Apple should do with its cash: by back all of its stock from investors, just like Warren Buffett told Steve Jobs to do years ago.
Over the last couple of weeks a ‘silly sideshow’ has been playing out between Greenlight Capital and Apple Inc. Greenlight Capital’s CEO, David Einhorn, has been trying to force Apple to offer preferred stock plans by suing Apple in court, while Tim Cook and Apple disagree with his proposals.
Even though Einhorn has won at least one small victory over Apple in court, it’s been reported that Greenlight Capital just dropped their lawsuit against Apple.
According to a newly-posted shareholder document, Apple now requires executive officers to own three times their annual salary. The CEO is still required to hold ten times his own annual salary in stock, as well.
This current move, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes a month after Apple’s board actually opposed a similar measure proposed by a shareholder.
Rumors are swirling that Apple, a company which has been having a rocky time on Wall Street lately despite reporting their most profitable quarter ever, might announce a decision to issue a stock split tomorrow at their next shareholder meeting, to be held tomorrow.
With AAPL stock in decline, investors are rioting to get a piece of Apple’s $137.1 billion cash horde. Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, of course, has been making waves with his lawsuit against Apple and his proposal that Apple issue an ‘iPref’ preferred dividend to investors; now, Morgan Stanley Katy Huberty has come out of a meeting with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, apparently convinced that Apple will more than double its existing dividend to investors to 6%.
If you’ve been up on your Apple news the past few months, then you’ve probably heard about a “silly sideshow” that been going on about Apple’s stock. Basically, Greenlight Capital isn’t happy with the amount of cash their getting back on their investment in Apple, while Apple has been hoarding all their cash.
Hoping to convince Apple to give shareholders some of their cash, Greenlight Capitals found, David Einhorn, has a concocted a plan that would have Apple selling “iPref” stock to investors who want to eat Apple’s cake.
Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn is a very influential Wall Street investor who is going after Apple for proposing to allegedly eliminate preferred stock options from AAPL shareholders. Apple recently started issuing small dividends to investors, and preferred stock would entitle investors to fixed dividends instead of the fluctuating common-stock dividends.
Einhorn and Greenlight Capital will hold a conference call today with interested Apple investors to discuss their ideas on how Apple should use its massive cash pile.
It’s hard to forget the day that Apple surpassed Exxon Mobil to become the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. But a lot has happened to Apple’s stock since August of 2011. AAPL has ridden a chaotic roller coaster on the stock market. After announcing a record holiday quarter Wednesday with $54.5 billion in revenue and $13.1 billion in profits, AAPL dropped more than 10%. That’s more than $50 billion in market cap gone in a day. Poof.
Apple’s stock isn’t doing so hot, and after over a year in second place, today marks the day that Exxon Mobil dethroned Apple on Wall Street.
And that’s ok. This doesn’t mean that the company is doomed.
Apple stock opened at $457.70 this morning, down more than 10%, following its financial results on Wednesday. The Cupertino company announced $13.1 billion profit for the first quarter of 2013, a slight increase over the $13.06 billion it posted for the first quarter of 2012. But despite that increase, it’s clear Apple’s phenomenal growth has hit a stumbling block.