How About Them APPLES?

On July 1, 2013, APPLE’s stock price opened at $402.69 per share.  Today, (at 1:09 p.m. Wednesday) as I write this article, it is going for $501.14.

As an APPLE shareholder, I could not be happier.  There are several reasons why the upward trend of APPLE’s stock is happening.  The first one is attributed to the tweet of major stock investor Carl Icahn that APPLE stock is undervalued.  In fact, he announced that he established a position in the Mac maker with a hefty $1.5 billion as tallied by The Wall Street Journal.  Putting money where his mouth is, his action propelled the stock quickly making APPLE more valuable by $17 billion.  He believes that the stock is worth at least $625.

Icahn also advised a buyback by APPLE of its own stock.  It turns out that APPLE is already on a buyback program allotting as high as $60 billion for it.

When the stock price was going down, I thought having a relatively high dividend was a good consolation.  The return on investment is relatively high and the profit margins are quite satisfactory.  In short, the numbers were still looking good.

Added to other important reasons, I did not go to the MacWorld/iWorld expo this year because I knew that nothing exciting was going to happen.

Attending the CES Mid-Year Conference in New York, however, I noticed that many of the exhibitors were offering several accessories for APPLE products – a display of confidence not only of APPLE today but in the immediate future.

Soon enough, the New MacBook Air was launched and it is definitely a hit.  Publications like STUFF call it the “Greatest laptop ever made.”  Bloomberg says, “The Air takes battery life to places it’s never been on a lightweight laptop computer.”  Slash Gear writes, “There’s something undeniably liberating about being able to effectively ignore the battery gauge.”  WIRED on the other hand thinks that “The 13-inch MacBook Air is close to perfection as a computer notebook gets.”  And Computer World reviews it as “Mind-Blown!”

The recent announcement that a new IPhone will be unveiled on September 10, 2013 is another big reason for the rising APPLE stock price.  The speculation is that the company will offer a cheaper iPhone along with its newest model.  The new ones could have bigger screens, better cameras and special features like the fingerprint sensor technology.  They will also be available in different colors.