In an interview with ‘The Daily Ticker’s Aaron Task, tech journalist David Kirkpatrick says concerns around Apple (AAPL)’s stock and the company’s future are overblown. Apple’s shares have nosedived as of late, causing strong reactions from investors who are concerned by the decline. As of this writing, Apple’s shares (previous Nas close: $509.59) are down almost 200 points from the stock’s Sept. 19 all-time high of $705.07.
But despite the reversal of AAPL’s year-long uptrend and its technical aspects signaling a tendency of the stock being near-term on the verge of a relatively major break down rather than a break up, Kirkpatrick says he’d buy Cupertino’s shares because he believes Tim Cook is a “brilliant” CEO and the tech giant “has a lot of tricks up its sleeve” in the coming year.
“I don’t think there’s any fundamental problem with Apple,” Kirkpatrick, a longtime Apple watcher, said. “In fact, Apple’s P/E is still ridiculously low [currently AAPL sells for 11.54x forward 12-m/earnings]. It’s still by far the world’s most popular consumer electronics company. I would be a buyer of the stock.”
Kirkpatrick expects sales of the iPhone, iPad and the newly launched iPad mini, already a smashing success, will continue to surprise to the upside next year but warns that Apple’s extremely high profit margins for these products — nearly 30%, after tax — will fall as the consumer electronics market with already 1 billion smartphone users becomes tighter. Kirkpatrick also predicts 2013 will be the year Apple really leaps into the TV fray with its much anticipated ‘iTV’, which he describes as a “real, full-fledged screen TV” that’s built to connect to the net.
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