In the last few articles that I have written on
So, let's just take a look and see how well the shares have actually done compared to some of the old tech companies and a few other companies/sectors.
Tim Cook formally took over as CEO of Apple on August 24, 2011. That day the shares of Apple closed at $50.04 and closed this past Friday at $119.03, an impressive gain of 138% in 4 years, 3 months and 12 days.
Let's see how the three major U.S. indices (proxies), 9 so-called "old tech" companies, 4 financial companies and the so-called FANG quartet have performed in comparison to Apple since the day that Tim Cook took the top job.
Please note, before we get into the numbers, that all prices have been adjusted for dividends and splits, if any:
Index proxies:
- SPY-up 94%
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DIA -up 74% - QQQ-up 129%
"Old tech" companies picked at random/off the top of my head:
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Microsoft -up 153% - Cisco-up 99%
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Intel -up 104% - Seagate-up 268%
- WDC-up 147%
- Verisign-up 205%
- Adobe-up 284%
- Sandisk-up 123%
- Applied Materials-up 87%
I also picked four financials at random as follows:
- Goldman Sachs-up 72%
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Bank of America -up155% -
Wells Fargo -up 156% - J.P.Morgan-up 134%
Finally, let's compare Apple to the so-called "FANG" stocks as well:
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Facebook -up 277% (please note that Facebook was not yet public when Tim Cook took over as Apple CEO so I just used the closing price as of the first day of trading for Facebook, May 18, 2012). - Amazon-up 174%
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Netflix -up 1351% (let's call that an outlier) -
Google /Alphabet-up 198%
Like I said above Apple is up 138% since the day Tim Cook took over as the CEO of the company.
The simple average of gains for the three indices (proxies) for the same period is 99%, so Apple has out performed the average of the three indices by little under 10% per year on average.
The simple average of the nine so-called "old tech" stocks is 163%, so Apple has in reality has even under-performed this moribund group of shares.
The average return on our four financial stocks is 130%, so Apple has outperformed the financials by an average of less than 2.5% per year.
Finally, the average gain for the "FANG" quartet is 500% in the same period since Tim Cook took over as CEO of Apple. Let's call the returns on Netflix an aberration and cut that gain by 80% to a mere 270% and the average gain of the quartet is still 230% since Tim Cook took over as Apple CEO.
Any how one spins it, Apple has seriously lagged in terms of performance and that is and always be my issue with the company with Tim Cook in charge. Like I have said, he might be an absolute Einstein of the supply-chain/logistics world and a great guy to boot as well, however there is no denying the under-performance of the shares thus far with a wide range/group/sector of companies.
Investors will remember that 2011 was when we were smack-dab in the middle of the global financial markets melt-down, so the performance of the indices and almost every company included in this article (including Apple) are positively skewed to an extent as a result of being unduly sold off in the panic of that time period.
From Apple's perspective, what is even more galling is the fact that in the same period (FY end 2011 to FY end 2015) Apple sales have increased from $108.3 billion to $233.7 billion, net income has gone up from $25.9 billion to $53.4 billion, share count (fully diluted) has decreased from 6.6 billion to 5.8 billion and dividends have gone from zero to $1.98/share.
So, Apple as a company had performed absolutely brilliantly on every metric other than share price performance and the blame for the share price under-performance has to lie with the captain of the ship and that anchor/cross is his to bear alone.
Keep in mind that the captain of the good ship Apple has made almost $500 million in compensation since he took over as the CEO and will make an additional $500 million or so before he is through as CEO of Apple. That works out to approximately $320,000 per day in compensation including every holiday, weekend, personal and vacation time off that Captain Cook has "earned" since he took over on August 24, 2011.
All I can say is "WOW".
That's better than Bono style money, no?
(Long Apple, FANG and derivatives long and short on all five)
