Apple Inc (AAPL)

With the amount of cash they have, there is a cushion to see dividend raises continuing to come forth. They have really executed on all fronts. Their foreign expansion of smart phones is continuing. Last quarter, sales in China were up 70% year-over-year. They still have a very small market share in Asia, so there is further upside potential. They are continuing to innovate which is important for the future.

Looking at the seasonals, this does have some weakness in June, a little bit of weakness in January and December, but the rest of the months are very positive. The most positive month is April. He still likes the stock and it is still trading at a reasonable valuation. Lots of cash on the books and lots of opportunity to continue to do well. Trading at a PEG ratio of .9, which is a pretty decent valuation.

Trading well below market multiple, yet it is growing at a faster rate. That tells him that over time it will make that up, and go to levels that will take it to a valuation more in sync with the market. This is not overvalued and has some room in front of it.

He thought APPL would get creamed at some point but overall it has continued to go up. Tech companies do get beaten down at some point. You have to keep coming back with sexy products. He thinks it is crazy that they took on more debt when they had so much money in the kitty. Tech companies do get beaten up at some point.

Stock vs. Stock. BRK.B-N vs. AAPL-Q. The actual price should have nothing to do with it. If you want to hold it 5-10 years then choose BRK-N. In Apple’s space, they take turns dominating the space, so he can’t be sure of it for 5 to 10 years. Buffet may not be around in 10 years but he has good people running the company.

There has never been enough value for him to buy it, but if you own it, there’s no reason to sell it. The watch is the first non-Steve Jobs product.

He believes this still has legs. Tim Cook has done an excellent job at being able to manage this company as it goes through its maturity stage. The initiation of a dividend is proof of the metamorphosis that is taking place. He wouldn’t buy this for its dividend, but for its growing dividend. The cash flow they generate is strong, to maintain an increasing dividend over time. Trading at about 13X PE, which is very reasonable in this environment.

Definitely overbought. If you draw a 200 day moving average on the chart, and if it is more than 10% over the 200 day moving average, it is probably time for a pullback. However, this is all within the healthy uptrend. A rule of thumb is to watch the 200 day moving average, and if something arcs too high (10%) off that, it might be due for a pullback. After the pullback, that might be a good time to enter the stock.

(A Top Pick April 14/14. Up 70.56%.) Very excited about the applications that the iWatch can do from a health and payment perspective. He thinks this whole connected theme is going to be very big longer-term.

None of us know what the real impact of the new iWatch will be. This company has always been good with the consumer devices. They are very smart about it in the way they package it. He thinks it will be a win. He can’t see any downside to it at this point.

She does not like consumer products tech companies because of how fast the consumer shifts their preferences. She is always watching it, however.

There is more clarity than there was 2-5 years ago, when it was thought that they had to reprove themselves on innovations. They now have new products coming such as the new watch and Apple Pay. He thinks there is still a lot of growth and a long runway. Have become much more shareholder friendly. No company globally produces the amount of free cash like this company. His guess is that the 1.44% yield will probably close to double in April.

This has become the biggest holding in his portfolio, and he trims back when it becomes 5%-6% of the portfolio. He thinks this is one of the greatest companies in the world and there is still a long runway of growth potential.

He would separate the company from the stock. A lot of people love their products and use their products and are a very strong fan base. They dominate profitability and the smart phone industry despite that their market share is only around a 5^th globally. He would argue the reason this has been so successful in the last 10 years, is because somewhat uniquely among large cap tech companies, Steve Jobs had the ability to bring together the engineering department, product management department, sales/marketing department, and get them to bash their heads together. This got compelling products out really, really quickly and only focused on products that made a difference. With his passing, his fear is that this company looks a lot like most other large tech companies, where there are all sorts of good ideas percolating, but the real challenge is to get those ideas to market very, very quickly. If he owned, he would be very tempted to take a profit.

(A Top Pick April 10/14. Up 75.02%.) This is now at about an 8%-9% weighting in his clients accounts. It is still cheap at 15X this year’s earnings. Thinks that Apple Pay is going to be a huge success. (See Top Picks.)