Apple Inc. AAPL is holding its annual shareholder meeting on Friday in Cupertino, California, and Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research listed out some key questions that investors should ask Apple management.
Following are the questions from Chowdhry:
What specific plan Apple's Board has in place to lift the Apple's current depressed P/E multiple of 10.2x to at least that of S&P500's P/E multiple of 21.33x?
What specific options Apple Board has considered to replace the "nonperforming" CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri, with "passionate and visionary" Jon Rubinstein as the new CEO and Fred Anderson as the returning Apple CFO?
Rubinstein, who is considered as the father of iPod and iMac, left Apple in April 2006, while Anderson retired as Apple's executive vice president and CFO on June 1, 2004.
Apple's P/E multiple stand at 10.2x, while S&P500 is trading at a P/E multiple of 21.33x. Shareholders have lost a $198 billion since the stock was trading at $134. According to Chowdhry, the potential shareholder value lost due to this "depressed" P/E multiple is $480 billion.
"P/E multiple expansion occurs when a company is led by passionate and visionary CEO and CFO and not by taking on mammoth debts," Chowdhry said in a client note.
Apple has spent $110 billion in share repurchases, and $43 billion in dividends, with debts surging to $63 billion. Apple's CFO in the first quarter earnings call emphasized "We also plan to be very active in the U.S. and International debt markets in 2016, in order to fund our capital return activities."
"Tim Cook is not CEO material, he is an operations person," noted Chowdhry who has been vocal about removing Cook for a long time.
The analyst said companies having "visionary and passionate" CEO's produce better P/E multiples such as:
- Alphabet Inc GOOGL; P/E =31
- Facebook Inc FB ; P/E=36
- Starbucks Corporation SBUX; P/E=32, and
- Costco Wholesale Corporation COST; P/E=28
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