Should You Sell Your $AAPL Stock?
When the markets are moving on emotion it can be difficult to keep a clear head. The S&P just finished its 6th week of consecutive losses and Apple’s closing price was the lowest its been in over 6 months. Times like these call for a good old-fashioned rational analysis of the situation.
If you’re an AAPL investor, you know how frustrating these past few months have been. The stock has gone nowhere, bouncing between $325 and $355 while it continues to grow earnings at a pace unheard of for a company its size. Analysts have upgraded the stock and its price target over and over again with an average target currently sitting in the mid $400s, yet nothing sticks.
First, is Apple “Over-Valued”?
Some value investors say that Apple stock is priced for perfection. I say bullshit.
Today $AAPL closed at $325.90. This is the lowest closing price since December 29th, 2010, which is mind boggling given reported earnings now are about 33% higher than they were 6 months ago (EPS is currently $20.98 / share.)
Apple’s trailing 12-month p/e ratio is 15.54, including their ginormous cash hoard. Because each shareholder technically “owns” that cash, lets pull it out and look at its p/e based on its earning capabilities.
Apple has $70/share of cash (h/t Asymco). The value of Apple’s cashflow, brand, property, plant and equipment is $255/share with a p/e of 12.21. A quick scan of Google Finance shows the market deems companies like Macy’s, Wal-Mart, Citigroup and DeVry University worthy of a similar p/e. Uh Huh. What’s even crazier is, based on Horace Dediu’s estimates for 2011 earnings, Apple is currently trading at a forward p/e of ~7 ex-cash.
What Does Apple’s Price Say About It’s Prospects for Growth?
I recently read Vitaliy N. Katsenelson’s excellent book Active Value Investing where he presents a couple models for valuing companies in range-bound markets. I built a spreadsheet to help me model stocks based on his formula for determining an estimate of fair-value p/e. While the formula is beyond the scope of this post, trust me that it is extremely comprehensive.
If I plug AAPL’s info into my spreadsheet and assume average business risk, below average financial risk and average earnings visibility shows that the current price assumes AAPL will grow at an average annual rate of 2.1% for the next 5 years.
(Note: This is just calculating for ex-cash, so add $70 to $255.42 and you get $325.42. If you want to incude cash, it takes 6% growth to get a $325 fair value.)
Considering year over year earnings nearly doubled in the most recent quarter and Apple a) has either a small share of a very large market (PCs) or a large share of rapidly growing markets (phones and tablets) and b) continues to innovate in ways that widen their competitive advantage, I think we can safely assume growth will average more than 2.1%.
What do the Analysts think AAPL is Worth?
The average price target for Apple is around $450. I still have no idea what a “price target” means to analysts, so lets just borrow their growth estimates and plug it into my spreadsheet instead. While analysts are generally way off in their estimates, at least its better than nothing.
Apple has a long history of blowing away consensus estimates, so maybe we can pretend we’re being conservative by just taking them at face value. Yahoo tells me that analysts expect Apple to grow earnings at a compounded rate of 21.31% over the next 5 years. Plug this magical number into my model and you get a fair value of $595.98, ignoring adjustments for cash per share (Oh, by the way, Cash per share in a few years will likely be about what the stock is selling for right now).
A valuation of $595.98 would mean Apple is selling at a 45% discount to my model’s fair value.
But Analysts Are Usually Wrong?!?!
This is true. They tend to be overly optimistic when the world is bright and cheery and overly pessimistic when the world is dark and scary. So lets take another approach to guessing growth.
What you can assume is that companies with a history of producing high returns on invested capital over long periods of time are likely — but not guaranteed — to continue doing so. High returns on invested capital results in financial stability, high margins, fast growth,etc. It’s the #1 think I look for when identifying great companies for further study and Apple has averaged about 25% return on assets for the last 5 years. A ridiculous feat, especially because most of these assets are cash and earning a pittance.
Let’s go back 5 years to 2006. I couldn’t have accurately estimated Apple’s current income for 2011 because the iPhone and iPad didn’t exist at the time. The only thing I could know is that over the last 5 years, they had explosive growth and are committed to pushing innovation in a way that makes computing easier for everyday people. I also know that people happily pay a premium for Apple products and Apple believes in delivering value, not low prices. These two things would make me quite confident in Apple’s ongoing ability to produce a high return on assets and ongoing growth. However, I’d never know that the majority of profit would come from two product lines that didn’t exist.
The problem with a company that earns high returns on invested capital is that eventually competition wants to make high returns on invested capital too, so they enter the market and prices drop as competition heats up. While this is generally true, there are exceptions. Some companies are unfazed by competition and maintain their margins. Apple has shown time and time again that they are one of these magical companies. First with the iPod clones, then iPhone clones and now we are seeing iPad clones fail miserably.
Warren Buffett calls this ability to compete on something other than price “having a wide moat” and Apple’s just doubled in size with the announcement of iCloud. You can argue the minutae of the individual products and their competitiveness all you want, but the only thing that is really important is whether or not Apple is successfully defending and widening their moat. As long as that moat stays strong, they’ll keep growing while maintaining their unusually high margins.
Value Line tells me that Apple has grown earnings at a compounded rate of 30% per year for the last 10 years. Over the last 5 years they grew earnings at a compounded rate of 70% per year. The law of big numbers will eventually catch up with Apple (tree’s don’t grow to the sky you know), but lets say they’ll grow the next 5 years at 1/2 the rate they’ve been growing for the last 10 years, or 15%. While I can understand how growth could be much higher than 15%, I cannot get myself to understand it could be lower. 15% growth for a large company is generally considered impossible for long periods of time, but I think Apple is in a very unique position.
If we plug in 15% to my model, we get a fair value of $484.11, or about a 33% discount to today’s price.
Maintaining Short-Term Sanity Using The Technicals
These two growth estimates gives us a very conservative fair value range of $481.11 to $595.98 based on my model. That places Apple stock in the “RIDICULOUSLY UNDERVALUED” club. The problem is that the short term is generally ruled by short-term minded traders who don’t care all that much about fundamentals or long-term prospects. Which brings us to the witchcraft known as technical analysis.
I know, value investors aren’t supposed to talk about charts or trends or price/volume action. The thing is that the short term is ruled by technical traders and being able to play their game can help you understand when prices are getting close to a technical bottom. It doesn’t always work out, but I find that taking a look at the technicals usually allows me to make buy decisions closer to the actual bottom of a correction.
Here’s a what some of the technicals look like for AAPL right now:
For those unfamiliar with technical analysis, Apple has been bouncing between the two blue lines up top for the last 6 months. Technicians call this a pennant and it typically represents a temporary pause for a stock that has been going up. The bottom line is support, the top is resistance. As you can see we’re sitting at support as of today’s close.
Then we have a trend line pf support that goes back to May of 2010. Long-term trends tend to act as much stronger support than short-term trends and a year is a pretty long time in the Ritalin-laced world of technical traders. We closed about $0.35 under this line today.
Finally we have the 200-day Moving average. AAPL hasn’t come this close to touching it since September 2010, which was its last major bottom. 200-day moving averages are regarded as a very strong support level to the technical trading world.
Take these three things, then sprinkle in some other advanced indicators and you see the stock is severely oversold. This setup has historically been the best time to buy.
Summary
The big problem with technicals is that they tend to work well until that one time they don’t. However, when you combine technical analysis with Buffett-esque fundamental analysis you have the confidence to hold on as long as the assumptions you used to estimate the value of the business remain in tact. If you know you bought a dollar for $0.55, would you be compelled to sell if you find out dollars are selling for $0.50 a week later? I think not.
Looking at the scary state of the market right now probably makes you feel the need to cut and run. If you can let cooler heads prevail, then it’s clear that selling may be the worst thing you can do.
Disclosure: I’m Long Apple. Duh.
