Apple Inc. (AAPL) Message Board

Shorts are keeping the price down so that they can buy back cheaper.

Now your little girl or boy can have a cheap pink plastic iphone just like you. When they grow up, they'll have Apple loyalty and buy more Apple products.

Be it known, all applications for Apple bashers are withdrawn. All positions have been filled.

Shorts days are numbered. The count down has already begun. New pink, cheaper, plastic phone for the little girls and new, far superior, mini ipad for everybody. The beginning of shorty's demise.

Good, I'll take the company private and pay for it by the cash on hand. It will cost me nothing.

Hedge funds have half the financial reporters in their pockets. They write what they are told to write.

SEC officials retire with fat pensions and go to work at hedge funds as consultants for big bucks.

McD puts in trans fats to cook the fries and then takes them out again. Coke does "new" Coke and then replaces it with the old Coke. The biggest inovations of all time.

Then he's cheap AND greedy.

Morningstar has TTM EBITDA at $90M, EBITDA is 8.67 times buyout price of $20. Morningstar says forward PE of 7.5, P/CF of 10.6, TTM free cash flow $1.82. Free cash flow has risen every year since 2004 when it was $.09.

Apple

Just a bunch of dumb ace traders with their supercomputer playtoys. They don't invest; they don't even know what an investment is. They just push stock prices up and down all day long. By the end of the day, they may break even if they are lucky.

All the board members may have Swiss bank accounts.

People and organizations give fairness opinions on everything. Christe's and Sothebys give opinion all the time but their experts are wrong at least half the time. $20 was all that Goldman was willing to pay for their share after Raina gets his cut. But the board sure pleases Raina on everything including his pay package, golden parachute, and this buyout. The reason for no dividend being paid? By the way, who knows with whom that special board committee consulted or was in the room for the buyout discussion.

Yes, I think so too. My question is: does Raina tell these people what to do or are they independent directors who are working for all shareholders? During that 2011 six months repurchase period, only on very few days was the share price below $20. It's a wonder that they got those 1.3 million shares for so little. Revenue for 2011 $169M with operating income of $69M. TTM revenue $208M with operating income of $78M. So revenue increased by 23% and operating income increased by 13%. Over that period net earnings per share were only up 6.3% because of higher income taxes. The operating and net income increases weren't spectacular but the revenue increased nicely.

I forgot to say that on June 30, 2011, Ebix Board of Directors unanimously approved an increase to the Company’s share repurchase program from $45 million to $100 million after repurchasing the 1.3 million at $20.03 per share.

I think that the writer is offtrack on most of the article. First teen retailers are still experiencing problems from continuing teen unemployment. Some teen retailers are doing just fine while others aren't. Discounters such as Ross who sell mostly clothing are doing just fine. I won't call Target and Kohl's direct competition to clothing retailers. Weather was indeed an extreme factor for the quarter. The Midwest and east coast experienced the coldest temperatures in the last 60 years with sever storms. Last year they experienced 100 year record warm temperatures. Spring clothes have not sold well so far this year. This writer overrates Chico's possible competition and underrates Chico's possible growth. H&M maybe launching too much too fast and may need to scale back their efforts. Their existing 269? US stores seem to have little effect on Chico's sales so far. Anyway that you look at it the apparel market in the US minus footwear is going to be around $200 Billion for 2013. Extrapolating H&M’s numbers based on its U.S. sales to-date and applying a stated 10-15% yearly growth in store count, by 2020 the company would have approximately $4 billion in U.S. sales. Hardly a threat to anyone when apparel sales are growing at 2.6% per year and would add another $36B to US sales by 2020. Soma still has plenty of expansion ahead of it and WHBM could expand another 300 stores. They haven't even opened their first Boston Proper store.

And then Chico's is still a potential private equity takeover candidate so this author's guess at the true value of the shares is as good as anyone elses. It's a guess.

Washington does not want NG vehicles which cost half as much to operate as gasoline and pollute far less. They are gung ho on promoting and funding the development of electric cars. Electrc is sexier, besides, green people support it. And then the government's' "advisers" say that NG stations would cost far too much and that NG conversion to electricity is a more efficient use of NG rather than burning it directly in the vehicle. Converting NG more efficient than burning it directly? and the cost of electric fueling stations vs NG stations is less? Go figure out politicians and their advisers because we could be energy independent by now. And then, NG vehicles are affordable since NG doesn't add much extra cost to the vehicle in comparison to the cost of batteries. We'll wait another 20 years before we have an affordable electric vehicle that can travel more than a couple hundred miles between fuel stops.

Consumer sentiment is going higher. Households are regaining their wealth thru higher home prices and stocks. People are used to high gas prices now, especially women who shop Chico's. It's the bad weather that's doing it for all retail clothing. CHS stock decline was overdone today.