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/income) are closely depending on the unpredictable tempo of the Zero Covid Coverage in China. Certainly, supply-chain challenges signify crucial danger 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) can’t 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, client 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 menace 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 development is anticipated to decelerate.
9. Apple faces the identical streaming challenges — “profitless prosperity” of upper content material prices, rising competitors and working losses that different firms with weakening share costs face (e.g., Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) , Paramount International (PARA) and Disney (DIS) ) but Apple’s share value has hung in. On this rating, Apple is perhaps compelled to make a sizeable and dear streaming acquisition to realize essential mass/share. Buyers could frown on this!
10. For among the causes talked about above, Apple is unlikely to fulfill consensus expectations for revenues/EPS over the following 3-4 quarters.
(This commentary initially appeared in Doug Kass’s Each day Diary on Actual Cash Professional on November 28. Click on right here to find out about this dynamic market info service for energetic merchants and to obtain Doug Kass’s Each day Diary and each day columns from Paul Worth, Bret Jensen and others.)