Consumer tech giant Apple (AAPL: $182) released its first quarter results last night, posting $120 billion in revenue, up 2% YoY, compared to $117 billion a year ago. The company posted a profit of $34 billion, or $2.18 per share, against $30 billion, or $1.88, beating consensus estimates on the top and bottom lines. The YoY growth during the quarter marks an end to four consecutive quarters of declining sales for the company, and it produced a beat on sales estimates across most of its product lines.
Apple’s strong showing during the quarter was driven by its flagship iPhone, with $70 billion in sales, up 6% YoY, compared to $66 billion a year ago. This was followed by the Services segment at $23 billion, up 11% YoY, compared to $21 billion, and iPad, Mac, and other product revenues at $7.0 billion, $7.8 billion, and $12.0 billion, down by 25%, 1%, and 11%, on a YoY-basis, respectively. This is largely the result of the company not having launched any new products across these categories in recent months, further aggravated by the fact that it had just 13 weeks of business during this quarter, compared to 14 last year. Apart from this, products such as the Apple Watch were removed from store shelves for a few days owing to a patent dispute with medical devices company, Masimo.
It was bound to get tough extracting more growth, and continually innovating with its long-running range of products. Fortunately, Apple has found another winner in its Vision Pro headset, with the $3,500 spatial computing device already hitting 200,000 units in presales, weeks before it was set to arrive in stores, giving rise to another major product line with a multi-billion dollar sales potential. We are a little bit skeptical about how successful this product will be. One of our favorite podcasters, Scott Galloway, a brilliant mind, believes it will never sell.
Apple’s eye-popping $2.9 trillion valuation might seem excessive to some, but the company still trades at just 7 times sales and 28 times earnings. While it seeks newer avenues to monetize its brand and drive growth, investors are well taken care of with $24 billion being returned in the form of buybacks and dividends, made possible by its massive $62 billion in cash reserves, $124 billion in debt, and $110 billion in cash flow. The debt is quite high in our opinion, but most of it is at sub-5% interest rate levels.
Our Target is $225 and our Sell Price is that we would not sell Apple. We’re a little concerned about the stock, though. Not the company, but the stock. It is SO BIG, that for it to get back to 10-15% growth levels, is not easy. To add 10% to revenues it would have to produce $28 billion in new business, an astounding number. The company could conceivably do it with major acquisitions, which it is not prone to do, or by moving into new areas, like the Apple Car. But these things are a long way off and meanwhile, revenues stagnate. Wall Street doesn’t like stagnation. The stock hasn’t participated in the strong market this year, peaking on December 14th at $200, and is off 10% in the last six weeks – losing $300 billion in market cap. It’s lost its leadership as Microsoft has passed it by in the market cap race.
So what to do? As always, it’s a tough call. We are big believers in letting the market tell us what to do. It’s down $6 (3%) after earnings early Friday morning as we write this, and the market looks strong starting out today. We would suggest setting a stop and if the market goes there, taking your cash and looking for other places for it. There are certainly a lot of great choices out there. We are going to lower our Target to $200 and are setting a Sell Price of $174. We added the stock at $24 in $2016, so we are happy for all of you who did the same. Perhaps the growth game is over now for Apple for a while. Will the company go away? Of course not. But it may stagnate here in the $170-$200 range for the next year or so…. and "stagnation" is a word Wall Street doesn’t like.