Financial news around Apple, something is broken at Twitter, and Apple TV+ talk.
Barclays Lowers AAPL Target to $133
Another price target cut for Apple shares. CNBC ran a piece earlier this week saying that Barclays Capital had cut its 12-month target on Apple shares from $144 to $133. Not super surprising, given the firm’s “Hold” or neutral rating on Apple shares.
The change came in lockstep with Barclays lowering its “revenue estimate by 7% for the quarter…” Would have been neat if CNBC said which quarter — the current one or the one Apple will report on on Feb. 2. The piece quotes a note from Barclays, saying:
What started out as production driven cuts has moved to demand weakness across product categories… We are also concerned by decelerating Services growth.
Date Set for Apple Shareholders Meeting
Though they tend to not be as informative as a quarterly earnings call, we’ve got a date for Apple’s annual shareholders meeting. That is to say, we know when it’s gonna be. It’s not the kind of thing you take a date to, and besides — nobody’s going. As it has been since the start of the pandemic 157 years ago, this year’s meeting will be a virtual affair. According to a piece from MacRumors:
Items of business will include voting to re-elect the Board of Directors, ratifying Ernst & Young LLP as Apple’s public accounting firm, approving executive compensation, voting on shareholder proposals, and more.
The meeting is set for Friday, March 10 at 9:00 a.m. PST.
Cook Compensation Reduced
Well in advance of the shareholders meeting, 9to5Mac says Apple published its annual proxy statement on Thursday. From it, the biggest news seems to be Tim Cook’s big pay cut. According to the statement, “Mr. Cook’s 2023 target total compensation is $49 million, a reduction of over 40% from his 2022 target total compensation.”
Don’t freak out. It was his idea. Kind of.
The times in the 9to5Mac piece are kind of hard to follow. The report says Cook’s total compensation in 2021 was $98 million. That year, the site says, “94.9% of shareholders surveyed supported the executive compensation proposal,” which it seems would have covered compensation in 2020. In 2022, the piece says, “Sixty-four percent of votes cast (…) were in favor of the 2021 compensation paid to executives.” That’s a pretty sharp decline — one that Cook suggested be addressed by paying him less.
If you want to know how his pay will break down — NERD! Also, it’s expected to go:
- Base salary: $3 million (Unchanged)
- Annual Cash Incentive: $6 million (Unchanged)
- Equity Award Value: $40 million
- Down from $75 million in 2022
- In 2022: 50% performance-based vesting and 50% time-based vesting
- In 2023: 75% performance-based vesting and 25% time-based vesting
Apple Falls Out of Glassdoor Top 100 Places to Work in US
Something Cook & Company may want to address during the shareholders meeting is employee satisfaction — or lack thereof. A piece from iMore says the Cupertino-company has fallen out of Glassdoor’s list of the 100 best places to work in the U.S. It’s the first time Apple’s been off the list since 2009, which is when the list began.
Your first thought might be that this is part of a bigger backlash against “big tech.” A look at the list shows otherwise. Notable tech names in the top-20 include box, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, CrowdStrike, and LinkedIn.
Thursday Night: Third-Party Twitter Clients Unable to Access Twitter
Something is broken at Twitter. The question is — Is this the company coming apart as many have expected, or was whatever was broken broken on purpose?
TechCrunch ran a piece last night saying that third-party Twitter clients were unable to access the service. My Tweetbot app told me repeatedly that it was unable to access my account, saying, “There was a problem authenticating with Twitter,” and that I needed to sign in again to access my account. Of course, it wasn’t me and there was nothing I could do.
Apparently caught unawares were the third-party Twitter clients. Tweetbot tweeted:
Tweetbot and other clients are experiencing problems logging in to Twitter. We’ve reached out to Twitter for more details, but haven’t heard back.
We’re hoping this is just a temporary glitch and will let you know more as soon as we know more.
Similarly, Twitterrific tweeted:
We’re aware that Twitterrific is having problems communicating with Twitter. We don’t yet know what the root cause is, but we’re trying to find out. Please stay tuned and apologies.
There are all sorts of reasons to suspect that this was an intentional move on Twitter’s part. Since taking over the service 157 years ago, Elon Musk has made platform changing moves without warning and — seemingly, sometimes — without a plan. Third-party clients don’t give Twitter the same level of user insight. They also don’t give Twitter ad impressions. Both of those may gaul the sinker.
Because he carried in a sink, you see.
At the same time, between firings and resignations, some people have just been waiting for the chickenwire and chewing gum holding Twitter together to give way.The way TechCrunch sees it:
It’s likely that Twitter made some changes to its API for third-party clients that resulted in these apps breaking down. It’s not clear if this is a step to thwart access to the platform.
So — yeah — either it was an accident or it was on purpose. Thanks for that.
Apple TV+ Sets Premier Date for ‘Jane’
A new Apple TV+ series seems to be targeting Earth Day. In a good way. The Cupertino-streamer issued a press release Thursday promoting “Jane,” described as “a new 10-episode mission-driven series for kids and families inspired by the work of Dr. Jane Goodall.”
The series centers on “Jane Garcia, a 9-year-old budding environmentalist on a quest to save endangered animals.” With her best friend, a friendly chimpanzee, and her imagination, Jane embarks “on epic adventures to help protect wild animals all around the world,” driven by the words of Dr. Jane Goodall: “Only if we understand, will we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, can they be saved.”
Of course, those aren’t her only words. Dr. Jane Goodall is quoted in the press release, saying:
I’m excited about this opportunity and relationship with Apple and [production company] Sinking Ship. The program “Jane” spreads a message of hope and reminds children that the environment is something that we all have to be concerned about while also inspiring them and their parents to make a difference.
Earth Day is the 22nd of April. “Jane” hits Apple TV+ a little over a week earlier. The show will premier globally on Friday, April 14.
‘Sharper’ Gets a Trailer and Release Dates
Hitting sooner than “Jane” and aimed at adults, Apple TV+ has released a trailer for the feature film Sharper. According to a piece from Cult of Mac, “sharper” is an old slang term for a swindler or con artist, and there seem to be plenty of those in this movie.
I could tell you everything that happens in the trailer and it still wouldn’t spoil anything. It looks like a woman is trying to swindle a billionaire. Her son tries to rob the billionaire, though she backs the son off for a bigger score. He targets the billionaire’s son with a scam of his own. I seems that the women scamming the men actually start falling for their marks… or is that part of the scam?
Think Mamet without the pretentiousness.
Julianne Moore leads the film, with John Lithgow, Sebastian Stan, Justice Smith, and Briana Middleton playing along. The movie hits theaters on Friday, Feb. 10. It’ll hit Apple TV+ one week later on Friday, Feb. 17. Between now and then, you can catch the trailer on YouTube.
Apple TV+ Garners 21 NAACP Image Award Nominations
And finally today, nominations for the 2023 NAACP Image Awards are out, and a lot have Apple’s name on them. A piece from AppleInsider says 10 Apple Original films and series have garnered 21 nominations — over half for two of the Cupertino company’s titles. They include six for “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” five for Emancipation, two for the documentary Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues, two for the documentary Sidney, and one each for “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,” Causeway, “Central Park,” “Little America,” “Loot,” and “Surface.”
The 54th NAACP Image Awards will take place on Saturday, Feb. 25, according to a piece from Billboard. The ceremony will be broadcast on BET.
Today on The Mac Observer’s Daily Observations Podcast
Snippets of code in an Apple-made Windows app namecheck two AR/VR/MR related operating systems. TMO Managing editor Jeff Butts and I kick those around. First though, we examine analyst sentiment around Apple. That’s all today on the Daily Observations Podcast from The Mac Observer.
Ken:
You opine that something at Twitter is broken. I opine that it is the Sinker, Himself. Why, you ask? Because, drama. And drama loosens lips and inspires clicks. And here we are, discussing Himself.
Otherwise, with Himself reinstating accounts for such sociopolitical reprobates as wasted no time in getting on with their business as usual, such as fomenting an insurrection in Brazil, suggests that Twitter itself is functioning as usual.
Nothing broken here.