Companies

The Financial Times has reported that Jony Ive, Sam Altman, and SoftBank are in talks to build an AI consumer device, likely a wearable. My guess is this never sees the light of day, but given the players involved it's worth considering its impact. Apple is in a good spot given the strength of its ecosystem makes it difficult for a one-off product to sway Apple users. Samsung on the other hand would be more at risk.

Meta's annual developer conference, Connect, highlighted that it shares the same vision with Apple when it comes to the potential of a new headset-computing paradigm, even if its flagship headset is light years behind (though priced far lower). Separately, Meta announced new AI products that will capture meaningful user attention.

Apple's dependency on China keeps investors up at night. Today Deepwater estimates that 40-45% of Apple's overall revenue is manufactured in China, and expects that to decline to 25-30% in five years. We believe half of the decline will be the direct result of production moving to India.

Apple excels at making consumer tech easy to use. The most recent example is the streamlined iPhone setup experience. Doing the little things right is why consumers who own one Apple product purchase additional products, locking those users in as lifelong customers.

Big auto is in a tight place when it comes to transitioning its business to electric, and the current UAW discussions will eventually result in a steep increase in costs that will further push them into the red. Tesla, however, can afford the pay raise and will emerge as the winner from the labor talks.

Apple’s fall hardware event featured the new iPhone 15 family and updates to Apple Watch at prices unchanged from a year ago. While most of these updates were incremental, they’re enough to attract the 400m iPhone owners with phones more than 4 years old, which should return Apple to revenue growth in the December quarter. Most impressive was the addition of spatial photo and video capability on iPhone 15 Pro models, which lays the foundation for Vision Pro demand, due out early next year.

Shares of AAPL have recently declined by about 3% based on investor concern that an expanded iPhone ban for Chinese government employees and its affiliated companies will dampen Apple's sales. My math suggests the worst case scenario is a 1% negative impact on Apple's overall revenue in 2024. The bigger question is what's the long-term impact of the US and China moving in a different direction? The answer: Softness in China can be offset by strength in India.

NVIDIA reported its second consecutive blockbuster quarter and guidance showing the AI theme is for real. Investors largely shrugged off the impressive results given expectations were high and the NVDA investment focus is shifting to how persistent the company's growth will be over the next few years. I believe they will continue to own the pole position in AI computing hardware at least through 2025. After that high margins will like bring in chip competition.

The Supreme Court rules that Apple does not have give developers the option to steer payments outside of the App Store. That means that status quo of the App Store business model which should generate about 20% of the company's operating income this year is intact. The ruling also keeps Apple one step ahead in Washington's pursuit of big tech regulation.

Shares of AAPL traded down 2% after posting what was essentially an in-line June quarter. Guidance for September calls for a 1% y/y decline in revenue compared to expectations of 1% growth. Those details water down the most important dynamic of the quarter: the installed base of active devices hit an all-time record. That means Apple's ecosystem is expanding which is key for long term investors. This growing base should power revenue growth acceleration in December and for full year 2024.

June quarter results showed that Search is still king at Google despite investor concerns that Bing would steal some of its momentum. In the next year, I expect Google to show the fruits of seven years of investing in AI to create a new Search experience that will increase engagement and revenue growth, a similar dynamic to what we saw a decade ago with the shift from desktop to mobile.

Meta's year of efficiency over, and it’s now about years of more efficient growth. The company's cost cutting is done, and the ad market has stabilized. Meta is shifting its focus to investing in AI and the metaverse, funded by a solid core business and DAU's that are growing 4% y/y, ahead of last years 3% pace. All of this should yield earnings growing faster than expenses through 2024. Deepwater is invested in META.