Apple Surpasses Dell's Market Value
bonch writes "Nine years after Michael Dell said he'd shut down Apple and give the money to the shareholders, Apple has passed Dell in market value, at $72,132,428,843 compared to Dell's $71,970,702,760. Analysts expect Apple to continue to outperform competitors, citing 2006 as 'poised to be the year of both iPod growth and, more importantly, Mac market share gains,' with earnings growing more than 35%. I should have bought stock two years ago!" We talked about the approach of this moment back in November of last year.
FYI. prices are competitive with Apple Products with DELL. I was wondering on the Price difference. So I matched similarly specked (I had to customize both to make them similar) laptops
Dell Inspiron 9400 $3,302
MacBook Pro $3,248
Now to be fare the Dell Inspiron did have a 17" display while the MacBook Pro was only 15. So I added the cost of the apple care program which is about the same as a size upgrade, when comparing older powerbooks of equal specs at different sizes.
Granted that with Dells and other PC you have a wider selection of options that allow you to customize them more closely to your budget. Vs. Apples one size fits group of people. But the Price of Apple Systems are about the same with as its equally match PC brethren.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Yes, and Apple has been near its 52-week high for about two and a half years and pushing their all-time-high for about a year.
At Macworld Microsoft stated that they have signed an agreement to continue for at least 5 more years. So it doesn't sound like it is going to die any time soon.
Apple had about 4% of the personal computer market 3Q05, and it still seems to be growing. It has been three years since Apple has been near 1.5, and that was apparently in 4Q03 at 1.7%. Dell still sells about 8x more computers than Apple does, but at much lower costs and much lower margins.
It doesn't hurt to point out that part of the excitement was about iPod sales, I think the predictions were 9 to 11 million units last quarter and Apple announced they soundly beat those predictions by selling 14 million.
You are wrong, sorry. Equity value+debt is called "total capitalization." "Market capitalization" is the value that the market ascribes to the common equity value of the company. You are buying a share of this common equity. The fact there there exists debt is already baked into that determination in various ways based on how people think that such debt helps or hurts the company's future performance.
The calculation you describe is grasping at a concept called "Enterprise value" which is total capitalization minus cash. Think about it. If you are going to add on the debt that company has to the total amount someone would need to pay to buy the company, because they would be assuming the debt, you should also subtract the amount of cash on hand. Finance 101, dude.
Apple has sold 42 million iPods, 14 million in the last holiday season. Everyone I ask who doesn't have one would like one. There seems to be some room for growth there.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
First of all, Apple has close to $9 billion in cash and cash equivalents, not $6 bn, about $12 bn in total assets, and no long term debt.
Then, you have the $5.7 bn revenue last quarter (not 5), including $1 bn in Apple Retail revenue, and the fact that revenues, profits, and unit sales are consistently increasing quarter over quarter, year over year:
Total revenues [and profits] for fiscal year, in millions:
2001 - 5,363 [(25)]
2002 - 5,742 [65]
2003 - 6,207 [69]
2004 - 8,279 [276]
2005 - 13,931 [2335]
Not to mention record (and increasing) sales of all of Apple's products, from iPod, to iTunes Music Store, to the Mac platform, including servers and enterprise.
You're also really wrong about Dell having "more profit in one quarter than apple's entire value":
Total revenues [and profits] for fiscal year, in millions:
2003 - 35,404 [2844]
2004 - 41,444 [3544]
2005 - 49,205 [4254]
Yes, Dell is a bigger company (surprise?) and has higher revenues and sales. But over the last two years, Apple is growing at a faster rate. Much faster. Also, when you say "market share" you'd do good to include the market share of all of a company's money-making products, not just the figure you like. It's funny when people keep going around saying things like "Apple, with 1.5% of the market" seem to forget that Apple has over 80% of another huge "market". Does that market not count?
Now we've got a transition to a commodity hardware architecture and platform, with the industry abuzz with what this could mean for Apple in the enterprise for a variety of reasons.
It's funny that you state exactly what is wrong with a lot of people in the financial sector: not being able to look past next year, or even next quarter, for what something is "worth".
Source for financial data: Apple Dell
Is what would happen if Michael Dell tried to run a company that had to make quality products to stay in business.
We've got dozens of dell servers (hundreds of servers total) where I work, and the dell servers have a 100% failure rate. That is, each and every dell server experienced a hardware problem that required replacing something. Although usually non-critical, no other vender even comes close. They may make passable desktops and laptops, but their servers are from hell.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
This is the problem with CEO's and their big mouths:
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From: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_1
Q: What is the future of Apple Computer?
A: Silicon Graphics.
Q: That bad?
A: Maybe it's a little bit different. But if you look at proprietary computer companies, whether it's Digital or Silicon Graphics (SGI ) or Apple (AAPL ), I think the fates are all relatively similar. We know how the movie ends. It's just a question of what happens in the middle. Apple has a very little customer base. If you look at the economics, it has been extremely hard for Apple to get a return on its R&D with a shrinking volume base. It's not to say that Apple's products aren't innovative or cool, but the economic factors here are so overwhelming, it's very hard for them to swim against that tide.
Q: If you were running Apple, is there anything you could do to change that?
A: I would never take that job.
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I would love to hear his response to those questions today...