2/1 Boredcast Message from 'smurf': Thu Feb 1 14:36:36 2007
Cool exxon mobil made 4.5 million in profit per hour last quarter. Must
be nice.
\_ Their profit was 11%. Apple's was 14%. Are you going to call Apple
on it or not?
\_ It is cool, my XOM stock is up 21%!
\- i dont think you can really compare energy, healtcare,
phone, cable, utility etc providers with a computer and
consumer electronics company. [although apple might be
playing some games with price advertising. i forgot what the
practice is called but i think they offer companies money to
NOT advertise prices lower than a certain amount. but
potentially artificailly raising the price of a ipod by a bit
is different from artificially manipulating oil supply].
\_ The difference being, "ipods (and apple corp) are cool and
big oil is not, so apple is good, oil is bad.
\- no, that is not the difference. the difference is
apple doesnt have externalities or influence govt
policy on a comparable scale. the one somewhat suspect
thing is the price adverstising thing. also, there are
scale factors. e.g. you cant compare say growth rates
of china and the us ... a company can always sell off
parts of itself to raise it's profit percentage. [e.g.
ibm selling off storage, or ge doing this all the time]
re: ipod, YMWTGF: (minimum advertised price, MAP).
\_ What does any of this have to do with apple being cool
and thus getting a pass, and oil being evil and thus
not? |
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