World of Apple

Following other analysts estimates earlier today, Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey has decided to weigh in on the fun. Bailey pegged Apple’s 3 day sales figures at 700,000 well above Gene Munsters 500,000.

Apple is yet to comment on how many iPhones have been sold, many expect the company to stay quiet until it has reached at least 1 million units.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told reporters on Monday morning that his firm believes Apple may have sold 500,000 iPhones over its first weekend.

The Los Angeles Times also reported similar figures citing an analyst from Global Equities Research.

Shoppers snatched up about 525,000 of the devices at Apple and AT&T stores from Friday’s launch through Sunday, said Trip Chowdhry

As trading begun on Monday morning stocks in Apple Inc and AT&T began to fall.

World of Apple of spoke to one person familiar with the activities of Wall Street who stated that today’s news that Universal is seeking shorter contracts will affect the price somewhat. The news has failed to shake the market drastically but Universals catalogue does consist of 25% of iTunes’ downloads but on the other hand iTunes makes up 15% of Universals profits.

Since the iPhones announcement in January Apple’s stock has risen 40%, following the launch of the product many people are beginning to cash in on the profits. The market always reacts in the same way following a product release.

Standard and Poor’s announced on Thursday that Apple Inc. will join its S&P 100 index. The company will replace MedImmune Inc. on the index following the end of trading on Thursday.

The S&P 100 is a selection of the top 100 companies from the S&P 500 and is comprised of the 100 leading U.S. stocks.

Apple’s Market Value Hits $100 Billion

In early morning trading Apple Inc.’s share rose as high as $116.06 per share, with 8861,875,000 shares outstanding this puts Apple’s market cap at $100,029,212,500.

Apple market cap reaches $100 billion as share price surpasses $116 per share

During afternoon trading the price dropped slightly to $115.10 causing the market cap to flex below the $100 billion mark.

Analysts Up Price Targets

Morgan Stanley raised its price target to $150 per share, representing an increase of 36-percent.

Analysts including Kathryn Huberty raised their target price for the stock to $150 from $110, the brokerage said in note to clients dated May 30

WR Hambrecht & Co. also raised its price target on shares for Apple Inc.

The research firm has recently been surveying AT&T/Cingular stores to see how demand is looking for Apple’s iPhone.It found that most stores are in the dark about when they will receive initial shipments of the iPhone.

“Results indicate that the stores do not have reliable color on the timing of when they will have the phone; most stores expect the phone on June 15th or June 22nd, and most expect to only have a few (highest number was 40 at one store) on hand initially,” analyst Matthew Kather wrote.

Looking forward to WWDC the analyst predicted an update to Apple’s professional lines.

Which could include new features like instant boot given the new technology from Intel’s Centrino platform,” he wrote. “The could be a number of other software related announcements too around the Mac platform, and possibly the iPhone/Apple TV.”

Yesterday turned out to be quite a ride for some Apple investors. The day started off well even with the bad news that Amazon will begin competing with iTunes in the sale of DRM-free music.

Then at 11:49am EST Engadget posted a story claiming that the iPhone and Mac OS X Leopard would be delayed. Without naming a source or specifying that it was unconfirmed the site published that the iPhone would be delayed until October and Leopard until January 2008.

The original post from Engadget:

This one doesn’t bode well for Mac fans and the iPhone-hopeful: we have it on authority that as of today, the iPhone launch is being pushed back from June to… October (!), and Leopard is again seeing a delay, this time being pushed all the way back to January. Of 2008. The latest WWDC Leopard beta will still be handed out, but it looks like Apple-quality takes time, and we’re sure Jobs would remind everyone that it’s not always about “writing a check”, but just how much time are these two products really going to take?

AAPL stock dives 3% during Engadget fiasco

Stock in AAPL began falling quickly, going from $107.89 to $103.42 in just six minutes. It is predicted that the 3% drop in price lost Apple $4 billion in market cap and some news organisations are reporting that individuals sold off millions of shares.

It turns out that the information Engadget recieved was false and the site was quick to update its story and Apple quickly notified Engadget of its error.

Apple stated in an email to Engadget that; “This communication is fake and did not come from Apple. Apple is on track to ship iPhone in late June and Mac OS X Leopard in October.”

Enadget continues to claim that the communication they received came from the interns of Apple HQ.

Some reporters are calling for the SEC to investigate the ongoings.

Apple’s stock soon recovered ending trading down just $1.40 from where it started.

CNBC offers a report on tonight’s annual shareholder meeting, the meeting was short on news but turned into a bit of a grilling during the shareholder question-and-answer session.

As Apple stocks continues to trade above $100 one shareholder asked how Apple would decide when the stock would split. Steve Jobs answered the question pointing to Google and Berkshire-Hathaway as arguments against a stock split.

Regarding the stock options grant to Steve Jobs the answer was clear, the options granted to him in August of 2001 were actually priced “higher” when they were awarded the following October. “I didn’t ask the Board to reimburse me,” he said.

Jobs also spoke of Fred Anderson who passed the buck to Jobs recently, Jobs said, “Fred Anderson is an awfully good guy. I thought his comments were a little wrong.” Jobs then read, and then re-read the SEC statement essentially absolving Apple of any wrongdoing, and commending the company for its cooperation in the investigation.

“Unless you think there’s a conspiracy involving the SEC too, I’m not sure what else to say,” said Jobs.

One shareholder questioned how the companies CEO is paid. Said Jobs: “I make a dollar a year. Fifty cents for just showing up; the other 50 cents is based on performance.” The crowd cheered.

The subject moved over to the environment and notable was the removing of many resolutions regarding the topic, Steve Jobs released an open later last week promising to make Apple a greener company.

Jobs was still quite vocal in criticising the “glorified principles” of environmental groups, instead of using scientific facts. Jobs noted that environmental initiatives are now top priority.

One shareholder noted that only four directors had showed up at the meeting, the shareholder was curious what excuses the directors were giving for missing the meeting.

Jobs pushed aside the criticism and noted that he held the entire board in the highest esteem.

Finally the subject of research was brought up with one shareholder pointing out the significant drop in R&D budget which now stands at just 4% of revenue. The shareholder pointed to the delay of Leopard as an example of what happens when R&D budget is cut.

Jobs replied saying that research is a lot more about people and quality engineers than it is about the money.

“I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check,” said Jobs. “If that were the case, Microsoft would have some great products.”

Apple will hold its annual shareholder meeting tonight, at the meeting it likely that ongoing stock options investigations are going to cause anxiety as all severn board members are up for re-election.

As a protest against the companies stock options problems some investors are recommending that shareholders don’t vote in the election of board members.

It looks like many shareholders will be happy with Apple’s progress, with a growing Mac market share and strong iPod sales.

The results of tonight’s meeting will likely see Apple executives forced to place safeguards to protect the company from any other irregularities.

Amalgamated Bank LongView Collective Investment Fund and the Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds have put together a motion demanding Apple set grant dates for stock options during a given fiscal year ahead of time. It also demands that options granted to senior executives be given an exercise price that is equal to the average opening and closing prices of Apple stock on the day options are given.

Apple is said to be opposing the move but shareholder worries could vote through Apple’s word.

Apple has today announced the results for its fiscal 2007 second quarter which ended March 31, 2007. Apple posted revenue of $5.26 billion and net quarterly profit of $770 million, or 87 cents per diluted share. These compare to revenue of $4.36 billion and net quarterly profit of $410 million (47 cents per diluted share) in the year-ago quarter.

Gross margin for the company was 35.1% up from 29.8% in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 43% of Apple’s quarterly revenue.

Apple shipped 1,517,000 Macintosh computers and 10,549,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 36% growth in Macs and 24% growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.

“The Mac is clearly gaining market share, with sales growing 36 percent — more than three times the industry growth rate,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re very excited about the upcoming launch of iPhone in late June, and are also hard at work on some other amazing new products in our pipeline.”

“We are very pleased to report the most profitable March quarter in Apple’s history,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2007, we expect revenue of about $5.1 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $.66.”

This evening Apple will officially reveal its Quarter 2 Financial Results. The conference call can be listened to on Apple’s website.

The call will take place at 2pm PT/5pm ET (10pm BST).

Analysts are expecting Apple to announce earnings of 64 cents per share on sales of $5.17 billion.

Back in January Apple forecasted results of 54 cents to 56 cents per share on sales of $.48 billion to $4.9 billion.

Analyst Shaw Wu of American Technology Research rated Apple with a “Buy” and target price of $145, Wu expects the company to offer its “usual conservative guidance” for the fiscal third quarter, to rein in “sometimes unrealistic expectations.”

Gene Munster, analyst for Piper Jaffray predicted sales of 11 million iPods for the quarter, but believes that Mac sales could have fallen between 5 and 10 percent with sales of 1.45 million units.

Join World of Apple for live coverage of the results.

Ex-Apple Chief Financial Officer, Fred Anderson’s attorney issued a statement Tuesday stating that Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the former CFO to backdate stock options.

Following this mornings report that the SEC has reached a settlement with Anderson in the stock-options investigation.

An internal investigation found that Jobs was aware of the backdating, but did not financially gain from it and did nothing wrong.

According to to Anderson’s attorney he was told by Jobs in late January 2001 thats Jobs had an agreement with the board of directors to grant stock options on January 2nd. According to the statement, Anderson “cautioned” Jobs that the grant would have to be priced based on the date of the board agreement “or there could be an accounting charge,” and also told Jobs the board would have to confirm it had given prior approval for the grant dates “in a legally satisfactory method.”

Jobs confidently assured Anderson that the board had given approval; “relied on these statements by Mr. Jobs and from them concluded the grant was being properly handled,” the statement said.

Anderson understood that according to Apple’s stock option plan and accounting rules, the grant date could be moved to a later date and there wouldn’t be any related compensation expense so long as the stock price was higher than it had been on the original date. He understood that the date was moved from Jan. 2 to Jan. 17 “to avoid any appearance of impropriety that might arise from a grant awarded just prior to the stock price rise that resulted from the Macworld exhibition and Mr. Jobs’ keynote speech” given there on Jan. 9 in which he offered details of new products.