Apple (AAPL) made history last week, announcing the biggest quarterly earnings of any company, ever. It remains the world's most valuable publicly traded firm and some people have even started to compare Apple to a country (see this article). Apple isn't the only tech company that investors are getting bullish about. HSBC rejects the idea of a bubble in technology equities and thinks that technology stocks will go 'nuts' in 2015, thanks to growth in the U.S. and the 'normalisation' of interest rates (see here). So at Stockopedia, we've been exploring StockRanks which have been rising, or falling, across the technology sector.
As American as Apple Computer
In an interview with Charlie Rose,
Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison, predicted that Steve Job's death would cause Apple to slip into a period of long-term decline. Ellison said "We saw Apple [rise] with Steve Jobs [in the 1970s]. We saw Apple [decline] without Steve Jobs [in the 1980s]. We saw Apple [rise] with Steve Jobs [in the 2000s]. Now, we're gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs."
However,
Apple's stock price has doubled since Tim Cook became CEO. Revenues have grown by 85%, from $108 billion (2011) to $199 billion (TTM). This is partly because Apple has consistently produced products which, to borrow Jim Slater's phrase, can be 'cloned'. Once the process of building an iPhone or MacBook has been refined, the same product can be reproduced again and again, and expanded internationally as sales go through the roof.
Furthermore, profit margins have remained steady at around 30%. Apple's brand enables the company to charge hefty prices without having to worry too much about losing business to competitors. This combination of strong sales and steady profit margins supports Apple's excellent QualityRank (95 out of 100).
Investors and analysts are getting excited. The company has a strong MomentumRank (98 out of 100) as Apple has beaten the market by a whopping 43% over the last year. Furthermore, analysts are becoming more optimistic about the company's earnings. Since December 2013,…
