Apple CFO Has 'No Confidence' In Company, Chowdhry Warns

Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdhry said that the Apple Inc.

CFO Luca Maestri has "no confidence" in the company after Maestri sold 15,088 shares of Apple at $103.01 per share. "Apple's CFO Luca Maestri is selling his stock, while forcing the company to borrow and squander it on buybacks. The CFO himself has no confidence or patience to hold Apple stock," Chowdhry wrote in a note to clients. "If the CFO believes in what he is doing at Apple, by doing buybacks with borrowed money, he should also borrow money against his home and buy Apple Stock, instead of selling his stock," Chowdhry added. The analyst noted that on July 21, 2015, Apple's Head of Retail Angela Ahrendts sold about 92,000 Apple Shares, priced between $129.62 and $132.86, which marked the peak for Apple stock. Investors wonder what did Ahrendts knew that motivated her to offload such a large number of shares before Apple's stock plummeted to mid-­90s. Chowdhry has been calling for the removal of Tim Cook and Luca Maestri. He says they should be replaced by "visionary and passionate" Jon Rubinstein, the father of iPod and iMac, and the return of Fred Anderson as the CFO. Shares of Apple were trading at $100.93. They were down 4 percent this year.