Appletell

The Superior Court of California in Santa Clara is summoning your favorite CEO, Steve Jobs, as well as other Apple officials back to court for a new lawsuit from the Boston Retirement Board.  This group is claiming over $105 million was lost on backdated stock options granted to Mr. Jobs.  Technically speaking, backdating is legal, but can harm other shareholders involved with the company.  Also, it must be declared Securities and Exchange Commission beforehand, which is the part these officials are accused of disregarding.

The BRB also claims that is has specifics to back up the charges, but they have not released the details yet because the court has yet to figure out how to handle the confidential information.  These types of cases have been coming to various Apple officials for about two years now, but have been stalled or dismissed due to a lack of evidence and rulings that the backdating did not clearly affect Apple’s stock price.  What are all your thoughts on this?

Apple shares fell about 4% after AT&T’s first quarter earnings report despite rising for the two days beforehand.  Investors were expecting huge iPhone sales for AT&T to help Apple reach it’s 10 million iPhone’s sold goal.  However, AT&T announced that it has only received 1.3 million new net subscribers across all of its devices which means not as many iPhones were sold as expected.  Still, TechCrunch points out that many iPhone’s have been sold internationally and then unlocked (around 30%), meaning that Apple could have sold more phones that AT&T’s numbers show.  From the call:

iPhone continues to be very popular with customers, feedback is very good. ARPUs are in the mid to upper 90s across the base. We continue to see customers adopting iPhone. Over 40% are new to us. Nothing really new in trends there. Continued, solid growth

All of these numbers and reports are, obviously, before the announcement of a 3G iPhone.  This device is expected to increase sales by a huge amount due to the high anticipation and demand.  However, even before this announcement, AT&T has reported a 22% profit increase, so the iPhone must be doing something right for them.  What do you think of all this?  How close is Apple to 10 million devices?

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]

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. 

Former Vice President and Apple Board-member Al Gore has used his stock options to purchase more shares of Apple stock at a discounted price, according to reports.

It appears he has used his board position to buy 1,000 shares in Apple at a reduced $7.48, giving him immediate $124,060 profit potential. Those shares were worth $131,540 by the end of Tuesday, as Apple is seeing it’s stock crawl back up.

Gore still has the opportunity to buy as many as 59,000 more shares later on.

Apple stock has been falling dramatically since the beginning of the year, losing more than $70 since it’s $200 high in December. Starting this Monday, Apple stock began to crawl back up, and made a reasonable spike of over $3.00 Thursday, closing at $135.36 as of this writing.

Read [MacNN]

In a letter obtained by AppleInsider, Steve Jobs urges investors to remain confident in the company, acknowledging the rapid slide in stock price of late.

Jobs opened the letter by saying that the Apple stock has been “buffeted around by factors a lot larger than [it].”

Jobs points out that among other tech companies, Apple has remained the strongest: “As you can see, we have outperformed many other blue-chip tech companies, including Google. I continue to believe that our fundamentals - our remarkable people, our clear and focused strategy, our new product pipeline, our 200+ retail stores, our $18 billion of cash in the bank with no debt, etc., will serve us well in the coming months and years.”

In closing, Jobs told stockholders to “hang in there” and said he was confident that Apple stock would return to where it was and grow further.

With 5.54 million shares of Apple, Steve Jobs is the second largest shareholder in Apple behind Fidelity Investments.

Read [AppleInsider]

Even after Apple announced their most successful quarter ever on Tuesday, apparently shareholders can’t keep Apple stock unless their iPod sales continue to go up. Despite Apple reporting record breaking Christmas sales, it seems all the stock market heard was that there was little growth in iPod sales. Could this possibly be because everyone and their dog owns an iPod nowadays, and demand isn’t that high? Egad!

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Apple has posted a list of steps on how to get your very own iPhone from the Apple Store. We recently told you how Apple sold out of all the iPhones at it’s retail stores, and this page gives you the info on how to get yours.

To check if your local Apple Store has availability, go online and check after 9:00 p.m. as the stores usually update their stock availability nightly. The iPhone sales start at 9:00 a.m. so make sure you get in line early for yours. The phones will be sold on a first come, first serve basis. So start lining up early and don’t forget your coffee as you may be in for a wait.

Read [Apple.com]

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