Cramer: Apple's Earnings Do the Talking
This post from Jim Cramer's blog originally appeared Feb. 13 at 11:27 a.m. ET on RealMoney.
NEW YORK (
) --
Apple's
(AAPL) - Get Report
about earnings. When you get a rally that puts a stock, any stock, up more than 20% year-to-date without a takeover you have to recognize that's earnings talking.
There's been plenty of talk about Apple, at $466 billion in market cap, as its own personal bubble. I get that. You have to be a little nervous that Apple's had a huge, parabolic run here.
But the problem with dissing Apple here and dismissing the run is that it's based on upward earnings revisions, revisions that are so great that it is difficult to understand why Apple isn't higher already.
We have had a ton of stocks that have gapped up this year. I count 20 stocks in the chartbook that I get hand delivered every weekend showing a price that is dramatically higher than the previous day's close because of a gigantic upside surprise. The stock simply skips points on the way to where it has to go. If we look at the charts we aren't astonished as the stocks are too low vs. the rest of the market given the earnings momentum and the price-to-earnings multiple vs. its cohort and the rest of the market.
Almost every single stock that blew away the numbers had this kind of leap, a vaulting that got the stock to where it is fairly valued versus the rest of the market.
Almost every single stock except Apple. But Apple should have had one of those moves. When it became clear that Apple had much more earnings power than we thought, something self-evident from the last quarterly report, the stock should have skipped multiple levels and cut right to $550. Why $550? Simple, because a $55 earnings-per-share numbers could easily be justified after that quarter and you have to believe that Apple at least deserves to sell at 10x earnings at a minimum.
Yet, because there are so many shares and because there is still a ton of skepticism the stock didn't trade right to where you could have expected, especially when it was clear from the conference call that there was an acceleration in iPhone 4S sales as the quarter wrapped up.
Keep in mind, too, that I am not playing the back-out-the cash game. Yes. Apple has $100 billion in cash, so you could say you back that out and Apple's really selling at $400 a share and is therefore selling at less than 8x earnings.
Now Apple's moving to its correct level vs. the rest of the market, blowing through level after level that should have been blown through when it was reported.
We can't be complacent about any stock. Even as there's so much going Apple's way, like a huge amount of Chinese iPhone 4 sales coming this quarter or the introduction of the iPad 3 sometime this spring, we have to worry that the market takes a tumble or that the Chinese sales disappoint or that the iPad 3 rumors prove false.
Nevertheless, if it were an ordinary stock, Apple would have gapped to the fair value amount of $550 vs. the rest of the market, rather than taking its good old time getting there.
Action Alerts PLUS, which Cramer co-manages as a charitable trust, is long AAPL.
