A market-average PE for a fast-growing company will cause a lot of seeming trouble to go away.
Even with its recent run-up, Apple (AAPL) is selling at a market-average 13 times current earnings. Yet most here at Seeking Alpha and elsewhere expect those earnings to keep rising. Current estimates on the next fiscal year's earnings are $47.26, which at its present $460 price could give a PE of 9.64.
Screaming buy. Absolutely screaming.
All of which lets investors ignore the company's China problems, any setbacks in patent court, indeed any warnings from any quarter.
Meanwhile, the thermonuclear legal war goes on.
Apple had to temporarily remove items from a German online store, but that is a temporary expedient. Motorola does, in fact, have a permanent injunction against iCloud and MobileMe push e-mail services, and Apple isn't having luck banning Samsung Android devices in Germany, either. (In case you're wondering yes, Google is behind Motorola's case and arguments).
The patents in the German suits involved technology that was supposed to be licensed under industry standards, and the EU itself is now investigating whether Samsung, which is also suing Apple, might be abusing such patents. Once you pledge a patent to a standard, you're not supposed to be able to decide who gets to use it. Yet Motorola has been winning in Germany on exactly that basis.
In the U.S. things are going Apple's way. Judge Richard Posner, who is hearing the Apple-Motorola complaints that could control other actions against Android, has agreed with Apple's interpretation of the '949 touchscreen heuristics patent as protecting an "API that allows real-time interaction between two or more subsystems" but overall wants to try fewer patents. Apple is now bringing this view into court against other Android makers and it's hard to see how it could be invented around if upheld.
With Apple seemingly winning in court and slowly turning the iPad into a gaming platform it's hard to see any argument against it.
Oh, and how big is AAPL today? Big enough to acquire Amazon.Com (AMZN). For cash.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.
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