Google Finance...or I'm sure any other finance site or online brokerage

According to M&M theory (that's modgiliani and miller, google if you want to learn more), paying dividends shouldn't affect anything. However, yes a new set of income investors may flock toward AAPL now but it is questionable how impactful this will be. The stock buyback should/could also boost the stock price since it sends a credible signal from management to investors that the stock in undervalued (again, this violates M&M theory but everyone knows we dont live in an M&M world).

Damodaran wrote a piece of Apple a while back. http://www.aswathdamodaran.blogspot....ue-excess.html
I only skimmed it but its Damodaran so I'm sure its quality.

Supposedly Jobs was opposed to a dividend from the experiences he went through in the mid 90s and the lessens from the financial crisis. IMO he felt that having piles of safe cash for a rainy day was prudent. The thing is most people agree this pile was way larger than what would be needed even for the rainiest of days.

i already tried looking for the quarterly earnings announcement dates on google/yahoo finance... but wasn't able to locate it (i know. i'm super newb).

does anyone else know when they release their quarterly earnings?

About the 3rd week of April they usually report. April 17th - 25th for a broad range. I don't think they've announced it yet. The quarter is still open.

Go to google finance then type in whatever ticker symbol you want...then go down a bit on the page and look on the right side...should be an area called "events"

Here's every company, but it isn't easy to read through because they list them by date, and its literally every company.

If anyone knows of a site that lists, say, only Fortune500 companies or something, let me know

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/ecal?c=US

Munster: How Apple becomes the first $1 trillion company
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/...source=cnn_bin



thought the article was interesting on how they arrived at that number. would be nuts if it happened. who knows. i don't own any shares in apple fwiw but wish i did sometimes.

Here is the interview with Munster:

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000082060


Also, April 24th is when Apple will announce their 2012 FQ2 earnings.

sandisk warned that sales are going to be weak due to slow demand and low prices. Since aapl bying 23% of the worlds NAND flash, how is it possible they have a good Q1 given this news?

I don't believe Sandisk is a major supplier to Apple for NAND Flash.

Hynix produces NAND flash for the iphone 4s. Toshiba is listed as a secondary supplier.

And I think Toshiba produces NAND flash for the new iPad as well.

From what I can tell, Sandisk only supplies NAND flash for the ipod nano.

scooot, youre not getting it. If Apple buys 23% of the worlds flash, even if they dont buy directly from sandisk apples total demand will still have huge pull through effets on every NAND flash maker.

only way im wrong is if sandisk makes a type of flash that is not used by apple, not if they directly make it for apple or not.

maybe apple buys 23% of the all new NAND flash memory that eventually goes into phones, music players, and tablets, but not 23% of all flash that's being produced. there's a huge sloppy-seconds/secondary market for this crap.

Where are you getting that Apple has bought 23% of the worlds flash?

I think an analyst came out with a report detailing Apple becoming the largest buyer of NAND flash...passing HP I believe.

ahnuld,

I can't intelligently comment on the specifics of the NAND flash industry/markets.

Maybe NAND capacity has grown much faster than demand for these products.

Maybe other uses of NAND Flash have declined faster than expected (digital cameras, USB sticks, MP3 players).

Maybe other companies that purchase these chips have been struggling (RIMM, HP, Dell, Canon, Olympus, Nikon, Nokia, etc)

And maybe demand in Apple (and its competitors) products have slowed down. It's certainly not impossible. And I won't pretend like it is.

I understand that while Apple might not be a large customer of Sandisk, there could be a correlation with Sandisk sales and Apple sales. I see the connection you are making...it's not confusing at all.

I'm just not as quick to assume any decline Sandisk's business will be reflected in Apples as well. I think that's over simplifying it quite a bit.



Just out of curiosity...what constitutes "a good Q1" for Apple? (This next earnings report will be Apples FQ2 FWIW)

I dont know but I assume sandisk gave their initial Q1 forecast with certain expectations for apple taken into account. Since that time apple sales have supposedly been better than expectations (or at least the market is saying that with the huge rally this year) yet instead of beating their guidance sandisk misses it. it doesnt add up.

while i think it could potentially show weakness is consumer tech- one explanation could be that more and more of the tablets being sold are 8gig (fire) or 16gig (ipad and androids)

and possibly sndk had been prepared for more 32gig and 64gig and just had too much...

i know that my last tablet i bought i went with 16gig because i said to myself- the technology changes quick- you can't swap the memory out when buying a new one and i will probably buy a new one sooner than i think- so i went with 16gig..

not to mention how good amzn cloud is for music...

so- i am not saying this is the reason- but as someone who is slightly bearish on tech- i am trying to think of potential excuses or something i am missing...

I don't want to come across like I'm shooting this down. I'm just holding judgment. If this were a larger supplier to Apple (Broadcom, Qualcomm, Samsung, Skyworks, Toshiba, Hynix come to mind...there are others) I'd give much more weight to this thought process.

Again, I'm not well versed in Sandisk's markets, their customers or their major sources of revenue.

Looking at the market, it doesn't seem to be making the connection given Apples price performance today after the news.
Apple dropped 0.8% today, compared drops of 1% SP500, 1.46% NASDAQ and 11% for SanDisk.


Qualcomm reports April 18th
Sandisk reports April 19th
Apple reports April 24th

We should get some insight leading up to Apples earnings.

Independent analysts estimates are starting to come out in a consensus around $43.5b in revenue and $12.99 EPS...for a general look at what we're expecting. There are still more estimates to roll in and probably some minor adjustments to be made yet. Typically, Wall Street comes in a bit lower in their estimates and further off as they historically have under estimated Apples performance.

So, is everyone ITT buying Apple expecting it to rapidly increase in the next 2 years? I'm about to throw some more money into the stock this week.

Separately, does anyone know of a site that outlines when stocks are up- or downgraded (e.g. changed from Hold to Buy)?

I'm expecting a very good quarter from apple primarily driven by great iPad sales and good iPhone sales. I'm most optimistic about the future growth potential adding the top two mobile phone carriers in china and the potential massive release of the new iPhone with 4g. Ive heard rurmors of a june release but that seems early. The growth in other product lines seems good but is a much smaller piece of the pie. I don't see growth slowing in the near term because i see the total market of smartphones and tablets growing rapidly in the next few years. Apple executes on their products and has a much higher retention rate than android, once you buy something apple you tend to buy other apple devices and apple customers have the highest satisfaction scores in the industry. I'm happy that apple doesn't have the majority of the smartphone market yet because it means they are not close to becoming saturated.

Yahoo finance tracks upgrade and downgrade history.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ud?s=AAPL

Speaking of...

BTIG downgraded Apple to a Hold from Buy this morning.

As long as the quarter is decent I need to sell down a huge position (reach long term capital gains on 50% of my position by end of the month. That being said, I did some levered options stuff late in 2011 and now have nearly 100% of my net worth in AAPL so it makes sense for me to sell down. I own a bunch of other stuff as well but am nearly at full margin leverage and would like to get back to nearly unlevered.

Bought some Call options for aapl today: Jan 2013 400, May 2012 550, Aug 2012 555 and Oct 2012 570. Lets hope for a big quarter

Now that the government has sued AAPL, does anyone think that their stock will slow down/plummet?

Obviously, this isn't a positive situation for the company.

But in the grand scheme of thinks, it doesn't appear to me that this will be a major influence on the valuation of the company. I'm just speculating though, so take this with a grain of salt....

From what I can tell, the Amazon is mad that Apple and a hoard of Publishers basically changed the business model for selling e-books...which are growing in popularity and pressure the price of print books.

Publishers would normally sell books to retailers (Barnes and Nobel, Amazon) and the retailer, in this case Amazon, would set the price. Amazon was setting the price for new and best seller e-books at $9.99 and eating away margin from publishers. Publishers didn't like this.

The charges basically state the group of Publishers got together and conspired with Apple to change that business model and help raise the price of e-books...which Amazon had large control over. With Apple acting as a new "retailer" they could sell e-books through Apple at higher prices. Here's how I understand it worked.

The new business model would put the power to set e-book prices into the publishers hands and have Apple act as an "agent" (instead of a "retailer"). Apple, being the "agent" takes a 30% commission of book sales sold through its services and allow publishers to now set the price of e-books in a more tiered fashion compared to Amazons $9.99 across the board. This basically takes away an agent/retailers (same thing basically) ability to compete on price and now Apple, Amazon, Google, Barnes and Noble, etc will only compete on service and the commission they take and have no control over e-book pricing.

The charge basically claims that this wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the publishers and Apple getting together to retweek the business model and this is all being done at the consumers expense....not to mention Amazon and other e-book retailers as well.

I'm not exactly sure what is illegal and what is just normal business practices. I believe that the act of the publishers getting together to jointly act and then engaging Apple to assist them in these actions is the main issue. I assume that if each individual company approached Apple, or Apple approached the individual publishers and pitched them on the idea, that would have been fine. But the group acting together, only signing on if other publishers signed on, the publishers collectively forcing Amazon to change from a "retailer" to an "agent", etc is what crossed the line. Again, I'm just guessing, I have no legal expertise.

I don't know how this plays out in the courts. I'm not even sure what is at risk for Apple. I mean, the work is already done....can the U.S. government force these companies not to use this new model. I mean, if the government breaks all the contracts and more or less resets the industry back to where it was...won't the individual companies just gravitate back to this business model on their own? Now that is is all laid out and operating?

Lastly, e-book commission are a very very very small portion of Apples revenue. It's important to the service they want to provide as a whole and the ability for consumers to easily purchase e-books on iPads and iPhones helps sales of those products but the effects of this on Apples top or bottom line won't be substantial in my eyes. If they get fined for the total commission they've received under the new business model, it will probably be under $200m.