Lion's AppleWatch

	Wednesday, April 11, 2012

News: Gartner Projects Apple iPad to Dominate Tablets Through 2016.

Apple’s iPad will continue to dominate the tablet market through 2016, according to new projections from the Gartner Research. The firm said on Tuesday that Apple will remain the largest tablet vendor through 2016, though it will lose majority share during the time.

2:13:57 PM

This is what happens when fear takes over from common sense...

Why did Apple drift sideways in 2011 and take off in 2012?

The dividend is one reason it's up. But what was keeping it down was fear.

The investors who mull over the mysteries of Apple's (AAPL) valuation at Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board have been trying to come to grips with the shape of the chart at right, which shows the company's stock price drifting sideways for most of 2011 and then taking off like a Scud missile in 2012.

Although recent gains can be attributed to growth funds moving into the stock after the company announced a dividend and buyback plan last month, that doesn't explain the action that began several months earlier, shortly after Steve Jobs died.

What was really keeping the stock down, suggests Anna Murray, a regular on AAPL Sanity who posts under the handle lifeisgood (and writes thrillers and romance novels on the side), was fear.

In an entry that starts with a quote from Buffettology ("The price at which a security is being sold is not always indicative of what the company is worth."), she puts it this way:

Fear has kept AAPL stock price suppressed, and mightily so...

The public was convinced that Jobs was the entire company, and the stock market saw this and responded by keeping the price of the stock far below its fair valuation. The effects of this are still with us, and only now have saner heads begun to realize that this company is an innovation machine that can't be stopped.

Of course those of us who have followed the company for many years already knew the talent base was deep. Those of us who listened to the conference calls quarter after quarter and acquainted ourselves with stories and backgrounds of the extraordinary contributors such as [design chief Jony] Ives and [CEO Tim] Cook knew better.

Apple in 2010-11 is a perfect case study of a fear-motivated public and business press overestimating a liability, which caused stagnation of the stock price.

Now the world is seeing the true business value and they are willing to pay a price far in excess of what the market had been valuing it.

Finally. Perception falls to hard reality. I believe we are just now starting to move the stock price up to the intrinsic value of this company, and I plan to enjoy the ride. 1:47:55 PM

As always MacDailyNews puts things in perspective: "Apple did this amidst a deep and prolonged recession, not during the height of the dot-com bubble..."

Apple's value soars to $600 billion

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Apple's rocket trip into the stock-market stratosphere took it to a lofty new height Tuesday morning, when Apple's valuation briefly crossed the $600 billion mark.

That's a milestone only one other company has ever achieved. Microsoft's market cap topped $600 billion in late 1999, at the height of the dot-com bubble.

The pinnacle came on Dec. 30, 1999, when Microsoft hit an intraday high share price of $119.94 (the equivalent of $45.57 today, adjusting for splits). That gave Microsoft a market capitalization of $618.9 billion, the highest ever recorded by a publicly traded company.

Microsoft now trades at a valuation of around $260 billion.

Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) shares reached a record high of $644 in Tuesday morning trading, nudging the company just past the $600 billion line. Shares later slipped to $641.47, a nearly 1% rise from Monday's closing price

Apple's new record comes less than six weeks after it reached the $500 billion mark, another extremely exclusive achievement. Only Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500), General Electric (GE, Fortune 500) and Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) have ever surpassed that mark.

Despite its size, Apple is still one of the fastest growing technology companies. The company reported in January that its sales grew 73% last year. It also posted the second most profitable quarter in history for a U.S. company.

The stock has been soaring for the past three years, but went on a tear in 2012. Apple shares reached $500 for the first time in February, then topped $600 in March.

One especially bullish analyst, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, thinks Apple could be the world's first $1 trillion company by 2014.

It was only three months ago that Apple's market valuation rose to $400 billion for the first time. On Jan. 25, it passed ExxonMobil (XOM, Fortune 500) as the most valuable company on the stock market. Exxon now has the second-highest valuation at about $391 billion. Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) is third.

Despite Apple's stunning rise in share price, the company's stock gains haven't kept pace with its earnings. That means Apple's shares are relatively cheap.

Apple had $127.8 billion in sales during the 2011 calendar year, putting it neck-and-neck with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500), the nation's largest tech company by revenue. This year, Apple is on pace to become the biggest technology company in the world, measured by revenue, outpacing current global No. 1 Samsung.

That's a pretty stunning achievement for a 35-year-old company that had a market cap of just $10 billion a decade ago.

Here's another fun fact: Apple CEO Tim Cook's staggering nine-figure pay package is getting even bigger.

When Cook took the helm in August from then-CEO Steve Jobs, Apple's board gave him an eye-popping grant of 1 million company shares. It came with a giant restriction: a 10-year vesting schedule. Cook is eligible to collect the first half of his stock package in 2016 and the rest in 2021, if he remains employed with Apple.

At the time of the grant, Cook's 1 million shares were worth $384 million. Apple's closing share price on Monday values them at $636 million.

-CNNMoney staff writer Maureen Farrell contributed to this story. 1:36:27 PM

Jim Cramer: Apple the greatest growth stock of our lives

“Throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s, there was much appreciation for the stocks of companies that delivered consistent growth, ‘Mad Money’ host Jim Cramer noted Monday,” Drew Sandholm reports for CNBC. “Since the dot-com bust began in 2000, though, the market preferred trades over investments. But Cramer said the ‘era of anti-investing’ is now over and the market has reverted to classic investing once again.”

“All this week, Cramer plans to highlight great growth stocks. He began by featuring technology titan Apple, which he called the ‘greatest growth stock of our lives,’” Sandholm reports. “Cramer said Apple has potential for multi-year growth that can easily be valued, such as its popular iMac, iPod, iPhone and iTV [sic] products.”

Sandholm reports, “Apple has a lot of upside, too, because many of its products aren[base ']t yet dominant in their respective markets. Each of its products continues to take market share.”

1:14:30 PM