Posted on 03/06/2015 6:59:17 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Apple Inc. will join the Dow Jones Industrial Average on March 18, replacing AT&T Inc., in the first reshuffling since September 2013.
Apple holds a market capitalization of about US$736 billion, making it the largest publicly traded company in the world. AT&T, by contrast, has a market value of US$176.5 billion.
Shares of Apple were higher in early trading, gaining 1.3% to US$128.02, while AT&T’s shares fell 1.3% to US$33.55.
The changes will push the number of technology-related companies in the 30-member gauge to six and boost their influence even more as the tech giant joins Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Visa Inc.
AT&T is being kicked out after falling 4.5% in 2014. The changes will take effect with the start of trading on March 19.
(Excerpt) Read more at business.financialpost.com ...
Then what metric is being used that's establishing that Apple is more successful? The only one in evidence is "todays's dollars".
Apple-hater-cult?
Not a new accusation, but, it’s nice to understand where you’re coming from. Apple fanatics don’t know how to handle criticism of their mothership, even when true.
Everyone is on an equal footing today ... all factors in the economy and customer base and business environment ... all apply the exact same way with all the companies. Thus, it’s a comparison on the exact same footing.
The APPLE-HATER CULT members don’t know how to handle their obsessive/compulsive disorder on Apple threads ... from what I can see.
Hey. This discussion is getting cute, and fun.
The Apple hater club. Sounds like something out of the Little Rascals movies.
Maybe you could start a club, called “The Apple-brown-nosing” club. ;)
The price of Microsoft was WAY over blown compared to Apple. Analysts of the period predicted a huge adjustment and it came. Analysts today say that Apple is way under-valued. . . and many are predicting Apple may reach a market cap of $1 Trillion.
Your claim of all those products at Microsoft ignores many products at Apple other than the iPhone that are bringing in a lot more than $1 Billion per product. In fact, Apple's products brought in THREE TIMES more revenue than did Microsoft's in the last calendar quarter of 2014 for a total of $74.5 Billion and profits of $18 billion. . . a profit equal to 70% of Microsoft's entire revenue for the quarter.
Your ignorance of Apple makes you claim that Apple is not diversified. . . despite Apple selling the best selling tablet computer in the world, a desktop and laptop computer that takes home 53% of all the profits in the personal computer market, having an App store that takes home greater than 65% of the profits in mobile apps, a Digital Music store that takes home more than 55% of the digital music industry's sales profits, an ebook store that is taking 30% of the profits in ebooks industry, and a new payment system which has garnered more than two-thirds of all secure card-less payments made in the USA in less than four months representing half-a trillion dollars of transactions of which Apple will take 0.15% (that is $1.5 Billion on each trillion dollars of transactions which is just taking off and is estimated may reach $10 Trillion of transactions in just a few years!). Even Apple's "little hobby" set-top AppleTV sold more than $4 Billion in the last quarter. In the smartphone business, despite hearing that Apple's iPhones will be dying on the vine anyway now, in the last full quarter, Apple outsold every other smartphone in the market (actually, they've done that every quarter for the last five years), but this last quarter they out sold the Number one maker of Android phones entire output, grabbing 25.4% of the Chinese smartphone market, better than 50% of the US market, 33% of Samsung's and LG's, the number one and two Android smartphones, in their own home market of South Korea!, and many other major markets.
You say that Apple needs to diversify . . but then in another breath, you claim if they buy other companies and diversify, it is a sign signifying panic. You want your cake and to eat it too. . . but Apple doesn't do what you claim. They buy companies that enhance their core strengths. . . or new markets they intend to enter and disrupt. Sorry, you just do not know what you are talking about.
The APPLE-HATER CULT shows up on Apple threads regularly. They are identified by their obsessive/compulsive nature of being unable to stay away from an Apple thread, and posting how Apple is failing, will fail, is doing worse than is reported, is not as successful as it appears, is fooling their customers, is soon doomed to failure ... in short ... always to the negative of anything Apple is doing.
You do appear to be in that cult status here on Free Republic ... but we shall see by how obsessive/compulsive you become in the above-listed actions ... :-) ...
If you can quantify "equal footing", I'm listening.
Bubbles are made by companies not producing profits. . . companies whose stock prices are over estimating their ability to produce value. Microsoft was just such a stock in 1999. That's why it crashed with all the rest of the dot.com bubble stocks. It had a PE of 70. Another such stock today is Amazon. Priced WAY OVER its ability to produce value. Amazon's PE is an astonishing 841. . . That is totally Bat Excrement Crazy that anyone would buy the stock. eBay? PE of 1130! Those are bubble stocks. Google is trading at 26 times Earnings. Apple's PE is only 17.
If Apple were trading at Google's PE, Apple stock would be at $183 instead of $127 and Apple's Market Cap would be $1.08 TRILLION!
Neither you nor tacticalogic know what you are talking about. All you know is that it's Apple, so you have to spew anti-Apple negativity.
The factors that all business has to contend with today, from government regulations to how good or bad the economy is, to disposable income that consumers have, to how many are unemployed ... to so many variables that they are not possible to be tracked.
But when every company is operating in that same environment ... then no matter whether you can even track all the variables or not ... it doesn’t matter, because if it’s “today” ... everyone has the exact same thing ... and then the “outcome” (money made) is a comparison for all companies today, on that equal footing.
It’s like doing a sailing race ... there are a lot of variables involved and you might not even know or understand them all. But what you do know is that all the boats encountered the same variables ... so the “outcome” (who wins) ... is definitive.
That is an accurate number. Thanks. The one in the Quartz chart uses Microsoft's December 27 high as though it happened on January 1, 1999 and included a whole year of very high inflation which got compounded. The actual figure should be calculated from 2000 dollars forward to 2015 dollars. . . because 4 days of 1999 just don't count for diddly squat.
And now it's personal.......
Agreed. Which makes "more successful than ANY COMPANY ever" gobbedlygook because it's virtually impossible to establish all the parameters that would be required to substantiate it.
That’s why I say to use “today” for establishing that, everyone is on that equal footing, and thus Apple has shown itself more successful than anyone else.
You can extend that into the past and say that what Apple is doing today, in establishing its success, is equally applicable into the past ... if you take Apple’s actions of today, and put them into the past.
But it’s so true ... PERSONALLY ... of the APPLE-HATER CULT ... :-) ...
It doesn’t work for today’s dollars and today’s companies ... today everyone is on an equal footing so there no question.
Star, I am afraid I have to disagree, wearing my economist hat and my ex-CEO hat, that both adorno and tacticalogic have an excellent point in absolute inflated dollars.
However, my point is also correct when looking at the relative value of the companies and producing value in relation to that pricing of their stock.
Microsoft's and GE's stocks simply were not worth what they were selling for as represented by their earnings. By the way, GE's was trading for 52 times earnings. These stocks were a true bubble made of over excited hype and exaggerated claims of totally unrealizable future possibilities. (I have not researched NTT in that light), but neither GE nor Microsoft had earnings to justify the exorbitant prices at which their stocks were trading. When that realization hit, the stock prices crashed to reasonable multiples of their true ability to create value i.e. wealth.
Apple's stock price is easily justifiable with the earnings it is producing. The only legitimate question is can it sustain such earnings in the future.
If it can't, won't this be considered a "bubble" in retrospect?
When you use terminology such as "Apple fanatics" and "their mothership" you reveal yourself for your true colors. You sir, are an Apple hater. You cannot hold a civil discourse without insulting people for their choice in hardware. You are a prejudiced bigot and a bully.
That's an exercise in mental masturbation, imagining how things would have turned out if Apple had acted differently in the past.
It’s not that Apple did not have to grow to this point now, and did not have to perfect their business to the point it is now ... they did ... and NOW they’ve become the most successful business of all time. That’s where they’re at today.
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