It’s that time of year again. It’s Tim Cook season, and it comes around every three months or so when Apple’s stock goes down or gets criticized. As soon as things start to look shaky, to the herd’s eyes, the lemmings begin to call for Tim’s head. “He can’t innovate”. “We want Steve back”. “He was the wrong choice”. “Isn’t he gay, lol?”. You’re all idiots. If you’re going to criticize, you’re open to criticism as well.
Like it or not, Tim Cook is the hand-picked successor to lead Apple, chosen by Silicon Valley’s apparent daddy Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a guy who didn’t normally go back on his decisions. Do you think he would come back from the grave and replace Tim Cook as CEO of Apple if he could? I seriously doubt that.
There are a few things people need to understand about Apple. First, this company is not in a bad position in compared to their Silicon Valley peers. People act as if Apple is just as bad as Valeant or SunEdison. When you’re number one, everyone jumps to criticize. This company is innovating, but has no need to release anything half-assed. Their top competitor, Alphabet/Google, hasn’t taken the “beta” tag off of more projects than I can count. Just a few days ago, on their conference call, Apple said that they’re doing much more in-house research and development than ever before. Apple’s pretty much had it with these Chinese blurrycam pics of concept devices.
Apple, under Tim Cook, has already acquired more companies than the entirety of the former CEO reigns at the company. Don’t believe me? Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple
It’s quite obvious that they’re working on VR/AR in-house, but there’s another reason they buy so many companies. One of the reasons they acquired Beats was to kill “Beats Music”, the streaming service that was eating iTunes’ lunch. Many of the companies Cook’s team has acquired were most likely seen as a threat, taken under the veil to protect themselves, and were kept out of reach from larger competitors. Due to Apple’s financial strength, this was a no-brainer to Tim.
Speaking of their financial strength, let’s just put the “$200 billion in acquisition power!!!” marketing slogan to death. This isn’t even something that’s paraded by Apple, and for good reason. Listen, this company couldn’t buy Tesla with their cash on hand, and could barely afford Netflix and Tesla together by liquidating most of their short-term securities. Not that these guys would sell to Apple, and have actually expressed they wouldn’t want to be sold to anyone. If you think Apple should, or even would, purchase a company that requires them to bring back their overseas cash, you are either an IRS or governmental authority with a tax revenue agenda or someone who forgets just how high the American corporate tax rate is. Tim Cook hasn’t brought back any of that overseas money, which clearly makes him a good fit for the job than the people suggesting massive takeovers. He understands how silly it would be to throw half of the cash stockpile away so our government can lie about replenishing Social Security coffers. Apple could buy a handful of Twitters but would be shoveling half of the money wired here for the purchase into a second money furnace called The Federal Reserve. When we get a Federal tax holiday, you know Apple will be the biggest beneficiary. Then we can talk about buying Johnson & Johnson or something.
Tim Cook isn’t perfect, but neither was Steve Jobs. If you aren’t ticked off yet, hopefully that got you. Jobs was a great creative mind, but a bad CEO. Cook is the opposite. But you know what the best part about Tim Cook is? He doesn’t need to be the creator. He pays people to innovate while he runs one of the most admired companies in history. He runs it really well. Sure, he may have gotten pushed around and dumped (temporarily) by Carl Icahn, but who hasn’t been. Sure, the Apple Car is a terrible idea. Tim Cook stood up to the government who tried to break into the iPhones of the world because they want your information. Tim Cook nearly has the entirety of Apple leaving no environmental impact. He may have launched “flop” products, but has increased revenues and earnings every single consecutive year he’s been Apple’s CEO. The numbers don’t lie. The numbers, not the media or the internet’s sentiment, is what matters. The numbers are good. They may have slowed from being “record” good, but they’re still fantastic comparatively to literally everyone else in the sector. If Apple is going to be a value stock forever, then so be it. Investors have to pick a side. As for me, I’ll continue to buy this growth company at a value multiple. I’ll defend Tim Cook as Apple CEO until something actually goes wrong, not when analysts overshoot.
