Tim Cook wants investors to
"think different" about Apple: less as a hyper-growth startup-like
company and more as a mature but robust technology corporation with the
world's most lucrative dividend.
If Wall Street follows Apple's famous advertising slogan of old, it may relieve some of the pressure on Apple's chief executive, quiet investors' grumbling about its recent share price slide, and buy the company time to do what it says it does best: come up with and market new products.
On Tuesday, Apple said it would return $100 billion to shareholders by the end of 2015, in part by raising its dividend 15 per cent and in part by increasing its share buyback program six-fold to $60 billion.
To some extent, the expanded capital return program helped mask its first quarterly profit decline in a decade, though analysts say the more important issue now is what Apple has in store on the gadget front.
Cook is trying to reset heightened expectations around a company once universally feted for its ability to captivate both consumers and Wall Street. In the years following the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, the company established a pattern of consistently blowing past even the most bullish Wall Street earnings expectations, much to everyone's delight.
But on Tuesday, Cook made the rare admission to analysts on a conference call that Apple's growth has slowed and margins have decreased.
Apple is a mature company that's now trying to get everyone to see it as one, analysts say.
"They are modulating into a state where the highs are not as high and lows are not so low," Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said.
If Wall Street follows Apple's famous advertising slogan of old, it may relieve some of the pressure on Apple's chief executive, quiet investors' grumbling about its recent share price slide, and buy the company time to do what it says it does best: come up with and market new products.
On Tuesday, Apple said it would return $100 billion to shareholders by the end of 2015, in part by raising its dividend 15 per cent and in part by increasing its share buyback program six-fold to $60 billion.
To some extent, the expanded capital return program helped mask its first quarterly profit decline in a decade, though analysts say the more important issue now is what Apple has in store on the gadget front.
Cook is trying to reset heightened expectations around a company once universally feted for its ability to captivate both consumers and Wall Street. In the years following the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, the company established a pattern of consistently blowing past even the most bullish Wall Street earnings expectations, much to everyone's delight.
But on Tuesday, Cook made the rare admission to analysts on a conference call that Apple's growth has slowed and margins have decreased.
Apple is a mature company that's now trying to get everyone to see it as one, analysts say.
"They are modulating into a state where the highs are not as high and lows are not so low," Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said.
No comments:
Post a Comment