Finance Essay Example - Analyzing Apple Inc

Analyzing Apple Inc.

About the company: Apple Inc.
Headquartered in California, Apple Inc. is an American Multinational company that operates in consumer electronic industry and offers products in electronics, multimedia services and software. Some of the popular products of the company includes, IPhone, IPad, IPod and IMac. The company is the second largest information technology company in the world and has 437 retail stores in fifteen countries.

Stock listing and current price:

The company is listed on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol of ‘AAPL’. At present, the stock of the company is priced at $129.49 per share.

Top Management:

After the death of founder CEO, Steve Jobs in October, 2011, Apple Inc. is lead by Tim Cook who moved from the designation of COO to CEO while Peter Oppenhelmer is the Chief Financial Officer of the company. Below is the complete list of executive board members of the company:

1-year return:

Amid the big success of IPhone 6 series and IPad air, the stock price of the company witnessed significant growth in the stock price. Below is the chart indicating the movement in the stock price over the period of a year:
(Yahoo Finance)

Over the period of one year, the stock has offered return of:

20thFeb, 2014: $74.47
20th Feb, 2015: $129.49
Holding Period Return: (129.49-74.47)/74.47
= 73.88%
Thus, the 12 month return for the stock is 73.88%.

Financial Highlights for 2014:

Rationale for choosing the company:
The reason we chose the company is because it has always been in news for good reasons where every product launch brings a magnetic wave for its customers. Since the very years of its inception, the company has launched customer-friendly products with core focus on innovation. Beginning with Macintosh operating system, it posed a direct competition to Windows. This was followed by a series of products like, IPod, IPad and IPhone, that changed the multimedia experience for the tech savvy people. Many technical pundits have rated the company as ’’ Most innovative company of the millennium’’. Most recently, the company launched IPhone 6 series and IPad air, following success of whom, it declared a quarterly profit of $18 Billion for September- December, 2014 quarter and also became the first company in the world to achieve a market capitalization of more than $700 Billion.(Clover, 2015)

Future Expectations:

After the success of IPhone 6 where the company sold 74.5 million handsets in one quarter, Apple Inc. is geared up for the launch of Apple Watch in April, 2015. Thus, with innovative products in the pipeline, we believe that the future of the company is highly optimistic. Even analyst firms are having a same belief as they expect the stock price of the company to cross $200 by the end of 2015. One of the major shareholders of the company, Carl Icahn has also increased his valuation stake in the company’s stock to $203 per share after blockbuster first quarter results announced few days back. (Hughes, 2015)

Works Cited

Apple Inc-Historical Stock Price. (n.d.). Retrieved February 18, 2015, from Yahoo Finance: https://in.finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=AAPL
Clover, J. (2015, January 15). Following Apple's Record Quarter Announcement, Samsung Reports Profit Drop. Retrieved February 21, 2015, from http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/28/samsung-reports-q115-profit-loss/
Hughes, N. (2015, January 28). Carl Icahn says Apple is still undervalued, plans to increase his $203 price target. Retrieved February 21, 2015, from http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/28/carl-icahn-says-apple-is-still-undervalued-plans-to-increase-his-203-price-target