Sunday, April 1, 2012

AAPL, are expectations too high?

With a nearly 50% increase in AAPL stock price in the first quarter, I thought it was time to revisit my AAPL long thesis.  While I view AAPL as still being cheap, I started looking at some of the expectations for this quarter and they seemed high. 

I created the 10 year financials (which are linked below).  With the tremendous growth of AAPL revenue and profits, I do not see much value in the historical numbers.  I think the best metric for AAPL is EPS, I did keep EBITDA, FCF simple, and FCF numbers there for anyone interested in looking at those numbers. 

One thing that I did find interesting was that the cash on the balance sheet on AAPL is slightly misleading.  AAPL has cash on the balance sheet that is larger then the book value of the company.  When I saw this I thought I had made an error but it turns out that the Accounts Payable and Accrued Expenses are very high relative to Accounts Receivable. 

I also created a projection for year end 2012, EPS, cash on balance sheet, etc.  What I am looking at is what stock price is reasonable?  I could see 800 or 850 before I would take profits.  (I could reduce before that but just for risk management purposes).  I think my EPS of $40.00 per share is very conservative. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At1Wluk5zm-ZdFNmbkpZWEhVQnZBSlpITkk2Tnk0Y1E

Where I see the most value is looking at the past sales data by product line to see if expectations are reasonable.  On the third tab, you can see past actual numbers and some analyst expectations that I have run across online.   

Some of the expectations seem too high for me.  However, I think about the second price point with iPad and think about how that helped iPhone numbers.  In the end, I can see the numbers being hit, so unless we see a further increase in AAPL shares in the run up to earnings, I will sit tight with my shares and know that we could see some giveback in earnings on a product sales miss or a guidance miss. 



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