As of Friday's closing price of $168.22, AAPL trades at a 23.8x multiple on my NTM EPS estimate (23.4x when excluding NTM net cash and dividends). First of all, sorry for missing last quarter. I had some issues adapting in time to a new version of Excel, still getting used to somewhat annoying new quirks. I should've planned it a couple months before crunch time, my bad. Hopefully estimates are about done getting revised down. It wasn't like just a weak quarter or two but more gradual, with the impact mostly felt cumulatively over the last two years. As an illustrative reference point, a year ..read more

As of today's opening price of $164.89, AAPL trades at a 23.2x multiple on my NTM EPS estimate (22.6x when excluding NTM net cash and dividends). Capital return program update (my expectations): $90-100b added to buyback authorization $41.7b remained as of Dec and about $17-20b as of April Quarterly dividend raised 13% to 26 cents Detailed estimates: 3mo ending Mar23 Rev$B GM% $EPS ---------------- ----- ---- ---- Analysts consens 93.0 - 1.43 My estimates 96.1 44.8 1.54 (15.87b shares ..read more

As of Friday's close of $148.69, AAPL trades at a 23.2x multiple on my NTM EPS estimate (22.6x when excluding NTM net cash and dividends). Market continues to ignore past scorching growth performance in fear of having seen demand pull-forward so subsequent stagnation or declines must be right around the corner. A slowdown from last year's growth is inevitable, but far from stagnation given the still incipient adoption of the latest drivers (5G, Apple Silicon, new Services) by the billion-plus user base. Persistent industry-wide component shortages potentially stretching into next year suggests ..read more

As of yesterday's close of $146.39, AAPL trades at a 25.1x multiple on my NTM EPS estimate (24.5x when excluding NTM net cash and dividends). As the scorching growth period due to last year's covid closures-impacted compares and subsequent extraordinary shifts in technology needs starts subsiding over the current and next couple of quarters, and given the past several months to almost a year of the stock stagnating, the market is likely ready to reassess Apple's future growth expectations and assign a corresponding valuation multiple that reflects this growth potential. I believe a long-term b ..read more

As of yesterday's close of $131.94, AAPL trades at a 26.6x multiple on my NTM EPS estimate (25.8x when excluding NTM net cash and dividends). For the annual update on the capital return program, I expect the quarterly dividend will go to 23¢ from 20.5¢ (+12.2%) and $135b added to the roughly $10b remaining by now in the share repurchase authorization ($32b remained by Dec) providing a comfortable cushion to sustain $85-95b annual pace of buybacks. Last quarter's revenue/EPS growth of 34/64% is absolutely dumbfounding (and obviously not sustainable) for this size of a business, an outlier resu ..read more

As of today's close of $136.87, AAPL is trading at a 30.2x multiple on my NTM EPS estimate (29.4x when excluding NTM net cash and dividends). I've extended the model projection a few more years into the future, and what came out is quite a bit astonishing. A virtuous cycle of self-reinforcing growth has ensued for Apple, starting NTM due to easy iPhone comps and resilient "work/learn from home" trends, followed over next 2-3 years by 5G and Apple Silicon adoption, further compounding even longer term into all lines due to ecosystem synergies (my so called "loopy" modeling). And all that is ev ..read more

As of Friday's close of $115.04, AAPL is trading at a 27.5x multiple on my FY21 EPS estimate (26.6x when excluding NTM net cash and dividends). I expect record-strong Dec quarter guidance should offset any perceived weakness from roughly inline Sep results due to est. ~$6b iPhone and ~$1b AppleCare revenue push-back (as hinted in last call but perhaps not fully digested by analysts/investors). This offset gets picked up mostly in current 1Q but some also in 2Q ending in March due to late Oct/early Nov launch setting up an unusual 2Q as first full quarter of sales this cycle, a privilege normal ..read more

At the current price of $369.77, AAPL is trading at a 24.1x multiple on my FY21 EPS estimate (23.1x when excluding FY21 net cash and dividends). Once again I don't feel comfortable publishing my detailed guesses for last quarter's numbers and product revenue breakdown. Hopefully I'll be able to share these details for the next report, as I expect Apple to resume providing quarterly guidance next week. On valuation, I've extended the projected multiple expansion, now going to 20x (was 18x) over the next 2-3 years. The significant increase in buybacks since 2018 is one of the most important ..read more

As of Friday's close of $277.97, AAPL is trading at a 18.0x multiple on my FY21 EPS estimate (16.9x when excluding FY21 net cash and dividends). I have no way of figuring out the impact to global demand from various COVID-19 containment and mitigation policies in over 130 countries, neither today nor in a month when I would normally publish these estimates. In fact, I don't think even Apple itself can, so I'm not expecting them to provide guidance for next quarter. I don't think Chinese manufacturing was significantly affected beyond a month or so, but the worldwide network of component supp ..read more

As of Friday's close of $318.73, AAPL is trading at a 22.0x multiple on my next-twelve-months EPS estimate (20.5x when excluding NTM net cash and dividends). What's a fair multiple? I've dealt with this question several times before, so not going to dwell too much on justifying this move. I just wrote 6 long paragraphs on how P/E multiples are convenient but unreliable, a popular but widely misunderstood oversimplification of proper valuation theory, how multiples do relate to DCF modeling, its pitfalls (both PE and DCF), how I've tracked their empirical usefulness over the years, and on an ..read more