Apple (AAPL, Financial) shares advanced from $397 to $477 as earnings estimates stopped falling and the market turned its attention to AAPL’s new products. The newly introduced iPhone 5s gives customers a compelling reason to upgrade. It looks like it will be a hit, and we believe that AAPL will find novel ways to use Touch ID and iBeacon to monetize its user base and ecosystem via new service offerings and apps. AAPL’s current non-hardware e-commerce business (sales from iTunes, AppStore and iBook Store, plus software and services) is $16 billion a year and growing. Not only is it growing faster than Amazon, AAPL makes more money in non-hardware e-commerce alone than Amazon makes in its entire business. That gap will likely widen in AAPL’s favor as AAPL rolls out new offerings and services. We believe that near-term share performance will track the success of the new phones, while the longer-term share price will reflect the market’s eventual understanding of AAPL’s strong ability to earn high-margin and recurring revenue streams.
From David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital third quarter 2013 letter.
From David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital third quarter 2013 letter.
