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Online retailer Amazon is set to create more than 5,000 jobs in Britain this year, the company said on Monday, boosting its investment in the country once more even as it prepares to leave the European Union.

Amazon, along with other tech giants such as Google and Apple, has increased its commitment to Britain in the last year, saying Britain’s referendum decision to leave the EU last June did not affect its investment plans.

The plans to add over 5,000 jobs in 2017 is a record for Amazon in Britain, although at least 2,000 of the jobs had been previously announced. The moves would take its permanent workforce in the country to 24,000.

Source: Amazon to create over 5,000 jobs in Britain in 2017 | Reuters

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Tech investors are a discerning bunch these days—a harsh reality that is pressuring Apple Inc. [stckqut]AAPL[/stckqut] more than it deserves.

In this yield-starved environment, stock investors are attracted to steady income. This would benefit Apple, except that like other former highfliers, it has been tossed out by investors. The iPhone giant’s shares have slid 6% this year and 21% over the past 12 months. While some of that is justified as iPhone sales have slowed, the selloff also looks overdone.

Much of the bearish thesis is due to weakening iPhone sales, which account for more than half of revenue. The iPad isn’t selling as well as it used to and the jury is out on the Apple Watch. Tech investors are allergic to anemic growth, which explains why the tech-heavy Nasdaq has lagged behind the Dow industrials and S&P 500.

Still, Apple has been punished more than enough. The iPhone slump appears priced in. And while the next iPhone, expected later this year, likely won’t be a significant upgrade, there is optimism that sales growth will soon bounce back. Analysts forecast iPhone unit sales will rise 5% for fiscal 2017, which ends next September.

Apple is the sort of stock that investors love these days. It plans to spend $250 billion on dividends and buybacks by March 2018, which would boost earnings per share and yield. Already, Apple’s 2.3% dividend yield is well above the 10-year Treasury yield.

Apple remains wildly profitable, too. Its $10.52 billion profit in the March quarter easily surpassed combined profits of Alphabet Inc. [stckqut]GOOGL[/stckqut], Amazon.com Inc. [stckqut]AMZN[/stckqut] and Facebook Inc. [stckqut]FB[/stckqut]

Source: Apple Is Ripe for a Rally

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Company name Apple Inc.
Stock ticker AAPL
Live stock price [stckqut]AAPL[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good

MANAGEMENT EXECUTION

Employee productivity Good
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Poor
EBIT growth Good

ANALYSIS

Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $103.08
Target stock price (averages with growth) $91.73
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $48.27
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $103.47

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=aapl

Apple Inc. (Apple) designs, manufactures and markets mobile communication and media devices, personal computers, and portable digital music players, and a variety of related software, services, peripherals, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications. The Company’s products and services include iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod, Apple TV, a portfolio of consumer and professional software applications, the iOS and OS X operating systems, iCloud, and a variety of accessory, service and support offerings. The Company also delivers digital content and applications through the iTunes Store, App StoreSM, iBookstoreSM, and Mac App Store. The Company distributes its products worldwide through its retail stores, online stores, and direct sales force, as well as through third-party cellular network carriers, wholesalers, retailers, and value-added resellers. In February 2012, the Company acquired app-search engine Chomp.

 

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in Apple Inc..

If you would like to understand how to evaluate companies like I do on this site, please read my book, The Confident Investor. You can review the best companies that I have found (and I probably invest my own money in most of these companies) in my Watch List.

How was this analysis of Apple Inc. calculated?

For owners of my book, “The Confident Investor” I offer the following analysis (you must be logged in to this site as a book owner in order to see the following analysis). If you have registered and cannot see the balance of this article, make sure you are logged in and refresh your browser.
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In order to assist you in using the techniques of this book, the values that I used when calculating the Manual pricing above were:

  • Stock price at the time of the calculation: $95.33
  • Growth: 0.11
  • Current EPS (TTM): $8.99
  • P/E: 11
  • Future EPS Calc: $15.14
  • Future Stock Price Calc: $166.63
  • Target stock price: $103.46

[/s2If]
I hope that this makes you a Confident Investor.

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Phil Schiller, Apple’s [stckqut]AAPL[/stckqut] senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said that Apple would soon alter its revenue-sharing model for apps. While the well-known 70 / 30 split will remain, developers who are able to maintain a subscription with a customer longer than a year will see Apple’s cut drop down to 15 percent. The option to sell subscriptions will also be available to all developers instead of just a few kinds of apps.

If the new subscription model becomes widely adopted, it will represent a fundamental shift in the economics of the App Store. Developers will be incentivized to sell their apps for a recurring fee instead of a one-time cost. It could change the way consumers pay for certain apps, but it also presents a massive opportunity for developers, many of whom feel the app economy has become moribund in recent years. And as iPhone sales growth slows, a move to app subscriptions is another way for Apple to wring more profits from its existing user base.

Apple is also going to start showing search ads for apps in its iOS App Store search results for the first time, something the company had previously resisted.

Source: APP STORE 2.0 | The Verge

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The Apple Watch may not have had a great year, but some people are looking at the bright side: In one noteworthy way–plain old sales–the first year for the Apple Watch was twice as good as the debut of the iPhone.

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, the Apple Watch sold 12 million units during its first 12 months on the market, roughly double the total of the iPhone when it first went on sale.

Nine years after its 2007 debut, the iPhone is Apple’s most profitable product by far, having raked in almost $52 billion in the first quarter of 2016. For perspective, the iPad was a distant second with around $7 billion. But it wasn’t always clear the iPhone would be such a monster for Apple. The iPhone’s initial high cost as a phone deterred consumers, and the stakes of being an early adopter were much higher since it wasn’t only a new product—it was a new genre of product. Apple only sold six million units during the iPhone’s first 12 months.

Exploring the parallels among the Apple Watch and the iPod and iPhone is interesting, because all three seemed “unnecessary” and overpriced at the time they debuted. But while it’s still early for the Apple Watch, when you look at what features each product provides or problems it solves, the watch doesn’t appear to stack up to the older devices.

Source: How the Apple Watch’s First Year Was Twice as Good as the iPhone’s