Contrarian
I have been contrarian several times and most times I made
good money. We need to have good arguments to be contrary. Otherwise, we’re
committing financial suicide.
Many investors commit the same
error: Invest in a company because they love the company’s products. We need to
check out the fundamentals of the company and its prospect. I have nothing
against Apple. Actually I recommended Apple before based on its great
fundamentals while everyone was dumping it. Where were today’s enthusiastic
analysts on Apple then?
Why Apple is
successful
Peter Lynch taught us to look for stocks in the mall. In
this case, you do not even have to leave home.
I have a comparison of how the successful technology stocks
performed in the first ten years and then the next ten years. If they survive
in the first few years, most of them did incredibly well in the first ten years
and not too good in the next ten years. Apple is the only profitable exception
in the entire 20 years in my test. Apple had its bottoms many times and then
miraculously came back stronger and better. Luck cannot be the only reason. To
me, it is due to:
·
The vision of the late Steve Jobs.
Apple is not the
first one to introduce most products we use today. Jobs had the passion to make
them useful and affordable. He was the slave master to drive his employees to
the next level. These engineers and programmers are the best from our colleges
and some are on H-1B visas. He knew how to play his China card described next.
o
Apple is the master of outsourcing. How can you
find obedient workers to assemble Apple products at very low cost? These
workers are better than robots. They can be trained to assemble new products in
very short time and work long shifts without notice. Our unions, regulations
and high living standard do not allow ‘slave workers’ here. Actually the ‘slave
workers’ are quite educated and young. While many companies find defective
products from Chinese factories, Apple so far finds few if not none.
o Where can you find 40,000 technicians? Not from
the USA at any cost.
o
It also depends on China for the rare elements
that cannot be obtained economically from other sources.
o
The large potential market. Chinese can buy
similar products produced locally, but the selling point is the prestige of
Apple to boost up their social standing. China will open up 4G LTE for iPhone
line in more cities.
·
Marketing.
The long-line
waiting for a new iPhone or iPad is the best ad money can buy and even better
when it is free. Can the trick still work in the future? It will as long as we
have silly folks wanting to be the ones in his/her block to own a new gadget.
Scoring Apple
When I was writing the book
Scoring Stocks, first I used IBM
but its low score would not be a good example. Then I switched to Apple (AAPL).
It scored almost the highest. I recommended AAPL at $55.72 (split adjusted) in
April 19, 2013, the date the book was published. It is another example that
fundamentals work. However, when we’re swimming against the tide, we need to be
patient. At that time, the media and institution investors ignored
fundamentals. The best argument of not buying Apple was “Apple has turned from
a growth stock to a value stock”. They think they cannot get fired by thinking
the same as the herd. Just garbage talk from the smartest folks!
Fundamental analysis
as of 02/10/2015
[Sorry, the blog does not port my table. Until they fix my Instablog in Seeking Alpha, you have to buy my book "Complete The Art of Investing" from Amazon. The book is about the size of 3 books with many of my original ideas such as Pow PE taking care of cash and debt, Adaptive Stock Score System (ASSS - no kidding, Coconut Theory, Market Timing that worked... All for $10 on the Kindle version. It is interesting that this article recommended to dump Apple when it was $132. Its per share price loses more than the cost of the book.]
Explanation
Ø The first scoring system incorporates many vendors’ grades. The
second scoring system is from my book Scoring Stocks using metrics available
free from many web sites.
Ø Pow EY – Earning Yield (E/P) takes cash and debt into consideration.
Ø Expected EY, Debt/Equity, ROE, SMA-200% and RSI(14) are obtained
from finviz.com.
Ø Analyst Rating is from Fidelity. If Fidelity is not your broker,
use Recommendation from finviz.com.
Ø
EB/EBIT and F-Score are from
GuruFocus.com.
How Apple scores
It scores fine but not
spectacular. The score from my book in April, 2013 was 5 and now it is 2.
Fundamentally it is not as good as before.
P/B and P/S are usually not
useful for high tech companies. However, Apple’s P/B at 6 is exceedingly
expensive as compared to Google’s 3. When most analysts like the stock, usually
it will rise in the short-term. RSI(14) shows it is overbought. To conclude,
its fundamental score passes but not in flying colors.
The brief Fundamental Analysis should
be followed by the following:
Intangible Analysis (described next).
Qualitative Analysis includes articles
for Apple. First, start looking for articles in Seeking Alpha. Large companies
like Apple are hard to manipulate, so most articles are not ‘pump and dump’.
Technical
Analysis detects the trend and overbought condition. Many investors do not buy
a stock that is in its downward trend. SMA-200 is a good trend indicator. Its
price should be above the SMA-200 (same as SMA-200% is positive).
Intangible Analysis
Apple has lost a visionary leader
Steve Jobs. I hope he was not replaced by similar managers at Microsoft, who
are responsible for Microsoft's lost decade with few innovative products. Apple
has a lot of cash to finance new projects. High tech business is tough as they
need to build a better mouse trap continuously. When the mouse trap becomes a
commodity, it will not have a good profit margin. That’s one reason that
Buffett does not invest in Apple. If he read my book in May, 2013, he would buy Apple
instead of IBM and saved his company millions minus $10 for the book.
There are bright spots and bad spots for Apple:
1. Apple
Text Book. Imagine all students carry iPads instead of text books. Several
educational apps have been created for iPads.
2. Apple
TV.
It is a loser so far with a lot of risk and potential
competitors. However, the potential is great. It could give all cable companies
a run for the money. Wider internet channels would make it more feasible. Will
the cable companies provide these speeds to allow Apple TV and similar products
to step into their turfs? Do Apple or Google have secret projects to by-pass
cables’ internet?
3. While
the iPad and iPhone are peaking in the hardware, iTune, software and contents
for these devices to access have no limit. We have witnessed how iPad helps the
folks with autism and iPhones for the blind. I can envision many other similar
applications.
4. Apple
moves to Kindle's market. iPad is too big to be used to read books during
commute. You need to hold an iPad with both hands. The mini iPad, even making
fewer profit margins, will be Apple’s answer to Kindle and a good addition to
cover the lower end of its product lines.
5. All
the mobile phone technology is originated by the first generation (if not
counting Motorola) that Apple has a lot of patents. Its lawyers will milk money
from Samsung and prevent cheap mobile phones from coming to the USA.
6. Apple
Pay.
I saw a similar
ad from a credit card company a while ago and not recently. Apple has a proven
history of picking up some failed products and turning them into gold. It is a
big test for Tim Cook. Hong Kong had a similar application many years ago. The
advantage of that application is you do not have to carry changes. To me, this
product could be the next innovative and most profitable for Apple. Apple Pay
may not make a splash in the bottom line initially, but it is an important
product.
There will be cheap Chinese products flooded in our market.
However, the selling point is the prestige of Apple and its integration to
other Apple products. For a similar reason, my $50 Casio has no respect even it
is more accurate and more functional than an Omega costing many times more. It
will be successful, but will not make a big dent on Apple’s total revenue /
profit. The major problem of Apple Watch is the short battery life. If you have to
charge it one or even two times a day, it will not be too useful. Only social
climbers would buy the $4,000 that does not function as a $10 watch. The other
problem is how secured the data is.
8. The
major worry is whether they can maintain the urge of upgrade. If the new
enhancements would not give me reason to upgrade, I would not be the one
waiting in long line in bitter cold weather to upgrade my iPhone just for my
dumb ego. It accounts the majority of Apple’s profit.
9. Apple
has a lot of cash. Dividends usually boost the stock price and the option
values granted to the management. However, it is important to plow back to
development and acquiring technologies. They may have paid too much for Beats.
2016
and beyond
Xiaomi, a Chinese phone maker,
will most likely come to the USA in 2016 after conquering several emerging
markets including India. Its phone is almost as good as the latest model of
iPhone at about half the price. It also has a low-end version priced at about
$100 that would set up a standard for entry smart phones.
Xiaomi
prices the latest phone model barely above the manufacturing price and makes
money in the decreasing component prices. It gains more profit by stretching
the model to a longer life.
Apple’s
lawyer will prevent its entry that Samsung found out the hard way. For starters,
Xiaomi needs to modify the user interface to avoid some of the obvious lawsuits
in the USA.
Even if Xiaomi
will not enter the US market, it will steal more sales from Apple. Apple has to
learn from Cisco. You do not want to make China angry. If they do, they may
stop Apple from selling their phones in China. Hence, you may win the battle,
but lose the war. Xiaomi could be one of the companies that would force the
mobile phone to become a commodity product.
When the
phone becomes a commodity, both companies have to make money in the content.
Today Apple depends on iPhone for over 50% of its sales. In 2016, Apple stock
may face some challenges even without Xiaomi entering the US market. Eventually
the smart phones will become a commodity product and they may have to face
Xiaomi or other similar companies.
It is
one’s opinion and I would face a lot of opposition from the Apple lovers; it is
the same when I recommended Apple in May, 2013 when no one wanted to buy
Apple’s stock. Buy any stock depending on the potential appreciation (via
individual analysis), not on the love of its products, the company or the
management.
As of
2/2015, one commenter of this article pointed out Apple is owned by most hedge
funds and it is an indicator that it is at its peak. If you own it or similar
high-flying stocks, use a mental stop loss and adjust the stop when it
appreciates further.
This is a modified article from my book
Complete The Art of Investing.
