Appletell

Former Apple General Counsel Nancy Heinen is done with her end of Apple’s backdating scandal, but at a cost.

Heinen, who was charged last year at the federal level by the Securities and Exchange Commission, has agreed to pay $2 million, in addition to not being able to serve as an official of any public company for the next five years and suspension from practicing as an attorney before the Commission for the next three.

The scandal began in February 2001, at which time Heinen was accused of backdating stock options to January ‘01, a time when share prices were lower. This caused Apple to underreport expenses by as much as $40 million.

Heinen agreed to pay the fines and sanctions without admitting or denying involvement, much like Fred Anderson, another Apple ex-official, who shifted blame back to Steve Jobs.

Via [AppleInsider]

Apple announced yesterday their financial results for its fiscal 2008 third quarter, which ended June 28, 2008. The Company posted revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share. These results are up from revenue of $5.41 billion and net quarterly profit of $818 million, or $.92 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.8 percent, down from 36.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 42 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Details after the break.

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This Monday, July 21st, Apple will be report its FY 08 third quarter results via conference call. The call will take place at 2:00 PDT (5:00 EDT).

Interested viewers can also listen in on a live audio webcast, which will be accessible through Apple’s website. Viewers simply need a copy of QuickTime 6 or QuickTime 7 to listen to the conference call. QuickTime 7 is available from http://www.apple.com/quicktime.

This will be an interesting report to hear. Although the iPhone 3G sales came in too late to greatly impact the numbers, Mac sales were up 38% over the previous quarter, moving them up to an 8.5% share of the market (behind only Dell and HP).

Currently, AAPL is trading at $166.47 (down $5.34). There are many people who get paid a ridiculous amount of money to analyze and make predictions on such things, so I won’t infringe upon their territory. Rather, I’ll just use my Mac and iPhone on Monday to hear how Mac and iPhone sales are going, then let you all know.

Via [Apple]

Behind the excitement of Steve Jobs’ announcement on Monday of the new iPhones 3G was news that Apple would increase the percentage of recurring monthly service revenue it got from wireless carrier AT&T Inc.’s iPhone users. Due to this, Apple is expected to see an earnings dip of about 3 cents a share this year, according to some estimates. Hudson Square Research analyst Daniel Ernst said, “There was a piece of negative news out of this—that they had to subsidize for growth. You could take a bearish look at that. They had to subsidize in order to keep growing it.”

Instead of AT&T paying Apple a portion of service fees each month as it did with the last iPhone, they will now shoulder part of the price of Apple’s latest iPhone model to the tune of $200 to $500 per phone, according to estimates. Ernst still said that he anticipated Apple would have to make such a shift to continue iPhone growth, and he remains positive about long term outlook, echoing sentiment from several other analysts. “My view is that that is the way the cell phone industry works—it’s not their fault,” Ernst added.

Apple shares were down $3.13 (or 1.8 percent) to $170.13 in early afternoon trading on Friday on Nasdaq, after hitting a daily low of $165.31 in early trading. The stock is down nearly 9 percent since the close of trade on Monday.

Via [Palluxo!]

After the announcement of the 3G iPhone and subsequent price drop to $199, predictions for AAPL are looking up. Rich Gardner for Citigroup increased his predicted price point for AAPL to $287, up from $248. 

“We remain aggressive buyers of Apple shares at current levels. Apple’s decision to move from a revenue share model to a traditional subsidy model for the 3G iPhone is a significant positive because Apple receives iPhone-related cash flow sooner.”

Gardner also increased his 2009 profits by $1.5 billion, bringing his original estimate of $7.4 billion up to a sizable $8.9 billion. He upped his 2010 profits as well, albeit by less, bringing his estimates up to $10.2 billion from $9.3 billion.

More financial news after the break.

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In a recent report, analysts from research firm Piper Jaffray showed optimism for Second Quarter ‘08 iPod sales.  They are predicting that recent sales results from First Quarter ‘08 show Q2 sales to be in the 10.5-11 million range.  This prediction may seem somewhat high, as previous Quarter sales results and other recent sales trends indicate a probable drop of 6% in sales, rather then the 1% increase predicted by Piper Jaffray. 

“The growth prediction is based on the division of sales from the past two June quarters, which on average saw 28 percent in April, 31 percent in May, and 41 percent in June. This extrapolation may not reflect the current reality however, particularly in light of the February price cut on iPod shuffles, which helped boost unit figures."- iPodNN Report

Piper points out that these price cuts did damage AAPL’s Average Selling Price, but also predicts those numbers to be back in the norm by Quarter’s end.

Read [iPodNN]

After a rather dismal first part of the calendar year, with AAPL shedding over $80 at its worst, things are looking very up for Apple, with many analysts reversing their downgrading of stock estimates for the company.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky raised his target price to $190 a share, Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey raised his call on AAPL from $175 to $185. Citigroup set a $212 price target. Thomas Weisel Partners raised their call to $195, all in the past week. The consensus seems to be that while iPod/iPhone sales are slower, Mac sales haven’t been better and will boost the company to yet another successful quarter.

On Wednesday, Apple will broadcast it’s 2nd Quarter 2008 Result Conference Call on the web. Last time they had a conference call, they had a record breaking quarter but all anyone could focus on was the fact that iPod sales weren’t fantastic, but rather steady year over year. This sent the stock into a downturn. MacRumors compiled a little list of all that has happened this quarter:

On the Mac front, the early portion of this quarter saw the release of upgraded Mac Pros and Xserves just prior to Macworld San Francisco, with the new MacBook Air following suit at the expo. New Penryn-based MacBook Pros and MacBooks followed at the end of February.

This quarter also saw the release of Time Capsule, revitalized AppleTV and AirPort Express offerings, and higher-capacity models of the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPod shuffle. Also of note, Apple released a limited beta version of the iPhone 2.0 software, including a Software Development Kit (SDK) to allow developers to create third-party applications for the iPhone.

Listen into the call this Wednesday [Apple.com]

Yesterday, both Goldman Sachs and Caris upped their predictions for things ranging from stock price highs to second quarter revenues.  Goldman Sachs cited “strong Mac sales and a better product mix should offset sluggish iPhone and iPod sales and allow the company to report March quarter results ‘strong enough to satisfy the Street” when asked about their reasoning for increasing their target price for AAPL from $175 to $185.  Sachs also raised their March quarter Earnings Per Share (EPS) from $1.02 to $1.09 and their June quarter EPS from $1.05 to $1.12.  Surprisingly, Goldman and Sachs also predicted a total of 11 million iPhones sold in 2008, which is surprisingly 1 million more then the official Apple Estimate. 

Also of note is Caris’ second quarter profit of $7.04 Billion, an increase from $6.93 Billion

Via [Mac Daily News]

According to Reuter’s, a recent jump in MacBook sales has done Apple a little good.  J.P. Morgan Securities predicts a fairly sizable rise in Second Quarter profit, along with 2008 profit.  After an eighty dollar drop in value between December 28th and February 22nd, and the subsequent slow rise in price, this is good news for Apple and its shareholders. 

Apple reports that, yes, they have had a spike in MacBook sales, with Apple increasing its estimates from 1.97 million units shipped to 2.11 million.  Although this part is good for Apple, they have also said that their focus on the MacBook and the huge amounts of shipments has lessened sales of the iPod and iPhone.  Although ATT and Apple deny it, Munsters, among other people, believe that the decrease in iPhone inventory points to the imminent release of the highly anticipated 3G iPhone. 

Today, AAPL stock dropped below $10 a share and even though the price seems good, analysts are asking you to step back and spend your money elsewhere. Even with the recent launch of Apple’s (destined to fail) iPod, everyone is still advising you to hold onto your money. A major release bringing a drop in stock prices is pretty bad, and from the looks of Apple’s new product lineup, you shouldn’t expect the stock to do anything for the next few years - if the company is still around.

The industry seems to be investing more and more into the Microsoft company, who is said to be working on a product much better than anything Apple could put out at this current time, dubbed Windows XP. This software is said to be so revolutionary that it will include both a Notepad, Calculator, and the popular game Minesweeper.