Money

Apple’s stock surges to its highest price ever amid growing optimism over iPhone 8

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 15, 2017

Apple is breaking records—the company's stock price has surged to an all-time intraday high, trading as high as $134.88 today and having surpassed the previous all-time intraday high of $134.54 set on April 28, 2015. The current stock price gives the Cupertino company a market capitalization of nearly $710 billion, the largest market valuation for a publicly traded American company.

According to MarketWatch, just yesterday the stock had closed at a record $133.00, passing the previous record set two years earlier.

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15 interesting points from Apple’s Q1 2017 earnings call

Cody Lee ∙ January 31, 2017

Apple announced the financial results for its fiscal first quarter of 2017 this afternoon, and the numbers for the holiday period are pretty good. The company beat Wall Street estimates by putting up a record 78.3 million iPhone sales and more than $78 billion in revenue.

Following the release of its earnings, CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri hopped on a conference call to talk about their company’s performance over the last 3 months, and offer up some insights into its future. Here are some of the most interesting points from the call.

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Despite Note 7 fiasco & bribery scandal, Samsung just had the most profitable quarter in 3 years

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 24, 2017

Despite seeing its brand tarnished and anywhere between $2 billion and $5 billion wiped off its operating profit in the aftermath of Note 7 fiasco, Samsung of South Korea has managed to boost its fourth quarter earnings on the back of its semiconductor division and strong sales of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge flagship devices.

Operating profits rose to $7.2 billion over the last three months of 2016 on sales of about $45.8 billion. Samsung's mobile division captured $2.1 billion in operating income, a four percent year-over-year profit increase.

Samsung Mobile expects sales of its low-cost phones in the Galaxy A and J series to grow in the coming months. All in all, this was Samsung's most profitable quarter in three years as the company has clearly bounced back from the global Note 7 recall.

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Apple executives miss out on cash incentives as company falls short of sales goals

Cody Lee ∙ January 6, 2017

Tim Cook and other executives received less revenue in 2016, as Apple failed to hit its revenue and profit goals for the year. The Wall Street Journal points to a regulatory filing, which says the miss kept the leaders from hitting some cash incentives.

Apple said its annual sales were $215.6B, 3.7% below its target of $223.6B, and its operating income of $60B was 0.5% short of their $60.3B target. As a result, Cook received $8.75 million in 2016 compensation, down from $10.3 million in 2015.

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Apple will announce its Q1 2017 earnings on January 31

Cody Lee ∙ January 4, 2017

Apple is planning to announce its earnings results for Q1 of [fiscal] 2017 on January 31. The company on Wednesday updated its investor website to show that it will be hosting a conference call to discuss the quarter that Tuesday at 2:00pm PT.

Apple's first quarter is of course its holiday quarter, which covers the popular 3-month holiday shopping period between October and December. And as usual, all eyes will be on the company to see if it was able to solve its recent growth problems.

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Apple investing $1 billion in SoftBank Vision Fund

Cody Lee ∙ January 4, 2017

Apple is investing in SoftBank Group's new technology fund, reports The Wall Street Journal. The company confirmed its plans with the outlet to invest $1 billion in the SoftBank Vision Fund to help finance new technologies that it could use in the future.

“We believe their new fund will speed the development of technologies which may be strategically important to Apple,” Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told The Journal. She also noted that Apple has been working with SoftBank for several years.

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Apple plans to cut App Store fees for video streaming apps

Cody Lee ∙ November 16, 2016

Apple plans to cut the amount it charges to sell video services over its App Store, Bloomberg reports. The outlet says the move is part of an effort to appease content partners, whose TV shows and movies are vital to the company's larger video strategy.

Previously, the iPhone maker took a 30% cut of revenue from app and in-app purchases. Then in June it announced it would slice that in half after the first year Now it sounds like Apple is going to make that an upfront price for participating video apps.

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Ireland is cheering in favor of Apple in EU state aid tax ruling

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 10, 2016

In August, the European Commission slammed Apple with a tax bill from hell over a sweetheart deal it received from Ireland—which, in the Commission's view, constitutes “illegal state aid”.

Dublin promptly promised to join Apple's fight against EU and it's put its money where its mouth is.

Michael Noonan, Finance Minister in the Irish government, said that Dublin today challenged the EU judgment by submitting an appeal to the European courts in a bid to block the decision, ArsTechnica reports.

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