Jackass of the Week: Peter Cohan

Peter Cohan, writing for Forbes, questions whether Tim Cook is capable of leading Apple (“After $30 Billion Mistake, Can Tim Cook Manage Apple?”):

You might think that Tim Cook is doing a spectacular job. After all, since taking over as CEO on August 24, 2011, Apple stock has risen 74%, and its revenues and profits have soared 66% and 85% in the last year.

But since the Apple Maps fiasco, Apple has lost $30 billion in stock market value, reports The Guardian.

Cohan’s sleight of hand trick here is almost beyond clumsy. He’s like a stage magician doing a card trick who asks the audience, “Hey, everyone close your eyes for a second.” In the first paragraph, he acknowledges that Apple’s stock value has risen 74 percent under Cook. In the second, he switches from percentages to dollars, simply because $30 billion sounds like an awful lot of dough. With a market cap over $600 billion, any change in stock price, even just a few percentage points, is going to amount to a change in market cap of tens of billions of dollars.

The actual percentage loss in the few days post-Mapgate? 4.5 percent. Not sure where Cohan pulled his numbers from, but according to Wolfram Alpha, Apple’s stock price rose not 74 percent but 77 percent from closing on 24 August 2011 through last Friday. Cohan concludes that because of the Maps mistake and — yes — ongoing labor problems at Foxconn:

While those worker issues do not cost Apple shareholders money or seem to trouble its customers enough for them to stop buying its products, they are a further indictment of the problems with Tim Cook’s management approach.

He should solve them. If not, Apple’s board should find someone who will.

77 percent gain in stock price, 85 percent gain in profits. Shitcan him. What exactly is it about Apple that makes people lose their minds?

★ Monday, 1 October 2012