We recently published Jim Cramer’s Fresh 14 Stocks & Thoughts About Market Performance. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is nearly a regular feature of Cramer’s morning show. In this appearance, he discussed the firm in detail and wondered whether CEO Tim Cook’s successor could benefit from having a hardware-focused approach. The discussion kicked off on the news that long-time Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) chief operating officer Jeff Williams would retire. Williams was long thought to be Cook’s successor. Here’s what Cramer said:
“Well I’ll tell you this. I got to meet him in a very candid moment, spent some time, you know delightful guy, big think guy and uh, I think that their, the bench of big think is remarkable there but and I won’t say that he would be missed because he’s still there for now but he had the supply chain, but he really had the light touch. And I enjoyed him as I think many people at Apple do. There are a lot of people at Apple, people don’t understand, have that kind of, they’re convivial, they’re uh, they’re really in touch with what you might want. And look I think the guy’s terrific, what am I gonna say, I don’t wanna see anybody terrific leave, or retire. Would he have been a successor? I don’t know, because they’ve got so many people to succeed, Luca Maestri, the incredible CFO. But I don’t wanna see any more turnover.
“[On Morgan Stanley saying Tim Cook’s successor could benefit from having a hardware background] Well look, it’s funny hardware is part of the, I’m glad you mentioned hardware, hardware’s part of the issue of how NVIDIA got to where it is. This is an essentially, there’s a belief in many people on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, that hardware prevails here because we’re gonna get rid of a huge number of people who would do SaaS, you know, software as a service, and that includes, yes, Salesforce, includes ServiceNow, includes DataDog which got out of the S&P. Because there are going to be fewer and fewer people who are actually in the organization who need that. But that does not mean that you wouldn’t need more Apple.
“[On Melius saying you won’t need to code in the future] It came out at 6:43 and I immediately texted him, and I just said. . .again, their insight is so good. And he just keeps telling me, listen Jim you like this Salesforce is going to be, you ought to get on board. Well get on board, I mean my trust owns Broadcom, we have a huge position in NVIDIA, how much more can I be on board? But this is a session of hardware and the enterprise software guys, well we’re tired of companies who enable you to look at your organization and look at the workflow and we’re going to get rid of a lot of people who do that. That’s where AI is going to impact companies. Is we don’t need as many licenses. . . now back to Apple, look I know what people are thinking at Apple. That one is, is that Dan Ives says Perplexity is a no-brainer. Dan wants to be quoted by everybody. I think that he wanted to be quoted by Musk. I really did. . . no you kind of want Musk to say hey, that’s a great idea and you’re not going to get that. . . Dan has like mortgaged his career on liking Musk.
“Look the people who are retiring from Apple are the people you know. The people who you’re talking about are the people that we kind of hope, but Apple has to not have anybody else leave for a while. And they should have people like Jeff Williams, if he’s going to stay, untill the for the watch, have him stay for years because we just are worried. Those of us who have backed Apple are worried.
“[On Navarro saying Apple thinks they’re too big to tariff] I think that, you know we had Peter on, and I think that what Apple’s trying to was felt they would be good if they went to India. India’s a really important country, should be much bigger than China in a few years. I do think that, Peter’s view is this that when they do make these sweeping commitments like the 500 billion in four years, that they don’t follow up on that. And I’ve gone over this with him many times because I could show you where Apple has followed up. But there’s just a grave disagreement between what Apple has done in Peter’s mind and what they have said they were going to do. So when he’s saying that they were late, they haven’t done it, what he’s really saying is that you can’t trust them, you can’t trust them. And I come back and I say, look I’m not going to go with that, I’m not gonna not trust Tim Cook. And I think that he’s going to follow up, he’s a man of his word. But Peter is convinced they’re not people of their word. That’s a very hard statement. This is a great American company. . . can we just recognize that Apple is a gem? It’s a product that everyone around the world loves. . .and you can’t just suddenly say, you know what, I’m gonna start making them here.
A wide view of an Apple store, showing the range of products the company offers.
“Look, I’d like them to do Taiwan Semi, I mean Taiwan Semi and NVIDIA, they’re like the shovel ready and they go there, they pick, they watch tomorrow to see what state is the best and then they like go buy some shovels from Caterpillar and get to work. Yes! Yes! I mean I know it’s not optics if it’s Apple, but yes, they need to. And I don’t care which part. But they need to. And I think that maybe they want to do what they think is great for shareholders, and this is a waste of money for shareholders but we have an aggressive administration. And Taiwan Semi went and put real money and I think that Apple is putting real money and somehow it’s not visible.
“I don’t know, it’s a riff, that is, as ugly as I’ve seen, between, it’s like Bethlem Steel and Kennedy, it’s like hey the rich executives now we’re coming after you. And I don’t like it. I don’t like it because . . .Bethlem Steel and I saw they were being paid too much. That made sense to me. This seems to be much more of a let’s break Apple. Well, what did Apple do to break? You know they do need to make a commitment, no well they’ve a 500 billion commitment, they need the commitment to be more visible.”
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
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