What if you saw the overall stock market drop hundreds of points in a week? What if you saw an eight percent decline in the shares of your own company?
What? would you do? Tim Cook, CEO, ordered Apple buy back $14 billion dollars of it’s own shares in the past two weeks. In the past year, they bought back over $40 billion dollars worth. This is a plan to eventually buy back $60 billion of it’s own stock. Mr. Cook says this is a vote of confidence in what Apple can do now and what it expects to do in the future. You see, Apple has lost revenue in the last year and suffered it’s first annual decline in about a decade.
So is this a move of confidence or a move of desperation? Let’s not forget: There was a time when Apple stock was at over $700 a share. Now it’s around $520, but last year it was lower than that. Some have even said Apple’s glory days are about over. You know, the decade of the 2000s, when Apple started a revolution with the iPod, iPhone and iPad and Apple store. I have to disagree with these voices. But I’m still not sure if this is really a vote of confidence or not. It beats the alternative: Not buying them back and letting stocks sink further and further. I don’t know if they will come back to $700 a share or not, but I praise this move. Is this a move of confidence or fear?