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Final week I initiated a brief in Apple (AAPL) — and I added to my quick on each Wednesday and Friday.
Right here is my funding rationale:
1. Whereas the Apple eco system stays formidable (no shock, a “identified identified“), the corporate’s near-term fortunes (gross sales/earnings) are closely depending on the unpredictable tempo of the Zero Covid Coverage in China. Certainly, supply-chain challenges symbolize a very powerful threat to Apple in years.
2. The corporate’s reliance on China to supply a lot of the manufacturing of its core product holds elementary and valuation dangers.
3. Sadly, manufacturing sourcing points (at Foxconn) cannot be solved in a single day — the lag time to exchange China’s sourcing is comparatively lengthy, and measured in years, not months.
4. Important sourcing modifications from China couldn’t be effected till late 2024 on the earliest.
5. The enterprise cycle is popping down.
6. Unemployment is prone to rise, shopper financial savings are dwindling and customers’ elasticity of the demand to a $1,400 smartphone will nearly definitely be examined within the quarters forward.
7. Absolutely the degree of rates of interest (“larger for longer“) stays an ongoing risk to excessive valuation and “growthy” equities, like Apple.
8. That Apple has proven a bonafide curiosity in buying Manchester United (MANU) could also be a signpost that the corporate expects that natural progress is predicted to decelerate.
9. Apple faces the identical streaming challenges — “profitless prosperity” of upper content material prices, rising competitors and working losses that different corporations with weakening share costs face (e.g., Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) , Paramount World (PARA) and Disney (DIS) ) but Apple’s share worth has hung in. On this rating, Apple is perhaps compelled to make a sizeable and dear streaming acquisition to realize essential mass/share. Buyers might frown on this!
10. For a number of the causes talked about above, Apple is unlikely to satisfy consensus expectations for revenues/EPS over the following 3-4 quarters.
(This commentary initially appeared in Doug Kass’s Day by day Diary on Actual Cash Professional on November 28. Click on right here to find out about this dynamic market data service for lively merchants and to obtain Doug Kass’s Day by day Diary and every day columns from Paul Value, Bret Jensen and others.)
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