Apple Stock | After the iPhone Duo Event.

Here's my personal reaction on the Apple iPhone Duo and the latest changes to the iPhone Pro 18. This obviously the 17 Pro Max uh and how they're trying to sort of compete in the iPad mini space which we happen to have right here. I'm going to not go through every single little tech spec on this because there's a chance you've already heard about all of them. I'm just going to talk about what matters the most here in my opinion. That's should you buy it and ultimately what is this going to do to Apple's stock? Uh first things first, let's be very clear just upfront about Apple stock. I'm not trying to shill this stock. I think I only have exposure to Apple in my retirement account. It's not even in my main portfolio or my main exposures. This is like a just fully transparent here. This stock always goes down on these events that don't judge the event based on the stock movement during the day. That's a novice mistake. all the traders who got into it already got maximized out on rumors and now they got to cash out. So, old news. So, you usually get a pop a few weeks before an event like this, which you actually did have in the Apple stock uh you know, share price movement. If you go look at the days out, you could see the peak of the stock was actually the day Leopold got liquidated and we never made it back to that. That was just five weeks ago. Kind of remarkable to think. I mean, that almost feels like ancient history right now, but that was only 5 weeks ago. All right, so let's focus on this. Uh, the first and most important thing, obviously, is the iPhone Duo. Uh, now what I thought was really impressive is that when they were talking about the iPhone Pro Max, the 18 that they're coming out with, which they're not coming out with the base models, that was already in the rumor mill. the Pro Max and the Pro models will actually now feature if you use T-Mobile, which is like one of the most expensive carriers cuz you could get like the T-Mobile quality service on something like Mid-Mobile, you know, the Ryan Reynolds kind of one. You get you get the T-Mobile bands on that for like 15 bucks a month instead of 140 bucks a month. I know because I have both. I also have Verizon. I also have AT&T. T-Mobile's probably my favorite and I'm not a shill for T-Mobile. I have them all because when I travel, I got to be able to upload videos, okay? So, it's a business purpose. The point is I've always wondered, you know, it would be nice to have a function a functional way where I could use like uh a thin iPhone like that the iPhone slim they version that they had from last year uh and then have sort of like a work version but then not have two different numbers because that's a headache when you just want one primary number. Like it's one thing to have four lines for uploading videos. That's really niche, but most people just want the same number so that their text messages transfer between devices. Uh, and so if you have two phones, you're kind of screwed. You have that issue or you can't really forward to two different iPhones. They've now solved that with the T-Mobile uh iPhone handoff feature. As soon as I heard the handoff feature, I'm like, "Okay, they're setting up for the duo." Because I think what they're saying is there are going to be some people who want the iPhone Pro, not necessarily the Max or the normal iPhone. And then they also want the larger device, but they don't always want to carry around both devices. See, the foldable phone I think is actually going to be exceptionally useful for traveling. when I was traveling uh just recently with two two-year-olds, my twin girls, you know, two out of our seven children. When I was traveling with them and I was flying over to uh Florida, you know, so we had a 4 and a half hour flight or whatever, we had to hang the little hangers on the back of the seat in front and then you kind of stick an iPad in there and so that way they have little pouches. And the reason we do that rather than using a case on on the table is because then they can sit there and draw. Now, you could obviously still do that with this uh and and just, you know, hang it up in front of you, if you will. That's what we did. Uh but there is some benefit in that this can support itself without the need for a larger case. Though you could use a stand case, I thought this had some unique implications. I think what this means is a child can sit there and have the folded device, have the TV folded up like this, and then draw on the bottom half. That's what they were implying that you could play video on one half and sort of draw or text or use another app on the bottom. They did say they will support the Apple Pencil later this year. I'm a little frustrated that's not being supported right away because I personally, one of the reasons I have every iPad, the medium-sized one, the mini iPad, and the large iPad, is because the big iPad, once you have a case on it, it's heavy. You shove it in a backpack, you feel the weight of the larger iPad. But the larger iPad has the feature of having the keyboard case. So, I really like having the keyboard case. That's unfortunately the downside of getting a case like an official uh Apple case. Doesn't provide a keyboard for the smaller uh iPad mini, though there are third party versions you could use. So, I just ended up using one of these $20 composition notebook cases. and it keeps the weight down a lot to travel with a mini like this, but I don't get the benefit of that physical keyboard. However, I do get the stylus, which why do I like stylus and why do I think that's useful for the Pro? Again, kids using it and also me. I sit and I edit PDFs for work all the freaking time. I do a lot of reading on these devices. As much as I prefer the big iPads, I hate lugging around the big iPads. And there's nothing like using a device and a pencil uh when it comes to highlighting. It's just a totally different feeling compared to using a laptop. Laptops are cool. They have their purpose, but it's just not as fun to highlight a PDF or actively write on something you're you're working in, like inside of a PDF uh on an iPad. Nothing like that feeling. For example, I go into, like I say, I go into PDFs all the time. So, I go in and I pull out something like, "All right, here's Tesla's rare earth page." You know, I got to go to text and I type in the text over here. This is fine, I guess, if you're in a studio. See, now I'm going to sort of jerk up the size here or whatever. But I could do that with a pencil so much more freely. And it's so much nicer to have a mini iPad to do that when you're traveling. But that's where my frustration has always come up. Now I have two freaking devices and it's annoying. The iPhone Duo solves that. Also solves the fact that I literally bring a tripod around when I'm traveling to take videos or pictures uh either videos for my work or my family. Uh, you know, you could set it up. Then you could take a photo with your, uh, Apple Watch. You know, we've got that right here. We'll be talking about that just in just a moment. Uh, you could use this as your shutter control, which is very useful, but then you have to carry around a monopod and you got to pack that. And so, the amount of crap you have to pack kind of sucks. Still want a wireless mic for, you know, if you're going to set this up somewhere. But if you could take the Duo, which is what they demonstrated, uh, and sort of just take a table and fold it open like this, you could actually film yourself while it's standing by itself, you know, on some form of table or something. That's a lot harder to do with a phone unless you have some kind of supportive case for it. Again, there's a solution for everything, but the way this Duo can actually solve problems of, hey, if I want a smaller phone and a Duo, and my phone number can hot swap between the two, only supported with T-Mobile right now, that'll eventually expand, right? That's actually pretty exciting to me. Plus, I loved what they showed. They called it I think they called it the Q feature, which I thought was really cool. Uh what they talked about was this idea that you go take a picture of your children. You could have the other the second half of your uh duo play like a video or a clown or whatever to make your kids look at the phone and laugh while you're taking a picture of them. Again, I had seven kids, so for me that's really important. I have been a big fan of various different forms of meta glasses. Whether it's if I'm going skiing or doing something active, I ride these or wear these. Love, love, love, love the meta glasses. Uh because I could capture moments of my children that I just can't capture with a phone or a device. This at least gets them to smile when I actually want to take a picture of them. So, I do think there's use there as well. So, I think it's a win for creators. I think it's a win for family folks. I think it's a win for people who want to travel. Now, obviously, they're changing the device so that the controls are mostly on the side, which is so you could sort of one hand uh one hand control it, if you will, when it's closed or when it's open. That doesn't mean rewriting the app software. I actually think that also creates a benefit for functional usability on the device because, as you know, when you're using a phone or you're using uh Okay, locked out of both of them, I guess. All right, fine. I'll just log in on this one. See, that's the downside is Touch ID. Face ID gets mad at you. And the mini doesn't have Touch ID or sorry, the Mini doesn't have Face ID, which the Duo won't have Touch ID either. I hate absolutely hate unlocking my devices. And that sounds like a first world problem because it's like, come on, Kevin, it's four digits. How could it be that hard? But it's not for me because I end up using a really secure long password, which I think everybody should because your pass keys get linked to this device. And when your pass key is linked to this device, if you just have a code like 555, people can log into your bank account or your email or anything they want with a fourdigit pin by looking over your shoulder. So anyway, the point is once you have this device open, generally at the bottom of your device, you're going to have this uh this sort of bar where you're going to be able to do uh you know functional uh app openings. Okay, so I'll give an example over here. Let's just uh I'll hide a couple widgets here that don't matter. That's uh our late uncle Brian. He's such a good guy. We had an ice cream while it was like 20 degrees outside. But anyway, this whole bar section at the bottom right here, that whole section at the bottom you technically don't have anymore, which now gives you more screen real estate to work because you have a smaller, more liquid glass thumb menu on the right. I actually think that's a functional improvement that gives you back another essentially inch of the iPad display. I think that's really useful. So, I like that a lot. Now, one thing that I will say I didn't like, and I know some people don't like this either, but I want to be transparent. This there's no financial motivation for this video other than just the ads that play on it, okay? I'm not trying to pump Apple stock. Uh I I'm excited about these devices, and there's no sponsor for this video either. There's not even a coupon code, so I'm just sharing this for my enthusiasm uh for the technology. But, let's talk about the watch because this is where things get a little interesting. For the watch, they talk about the watch being able to live rewind what you're saying. So, for example, you hear somebody read the specials was the example they gave uh at a restaurant and then you doubleclick the crown, the little circular button on the side, which that's functional. I I like double clicking this as a sort of functional element, if you will. If we could get that to focus here. There we go. This little crown right here. Just by double clicking this, you know, pushing down on it, I'll be able to live rewind what was said 15 seconds and then kind of see a transcription of what somebody said in case I misheard it. Um, okay. Um, fine. I don't know how useful that's going to be. I don't know if I'm standing in front of somebody, I like, hold on a sec, click, click, and then rewind. It's like, could you repeat that? You know, like I still be human here, right? Uh, so I I didn't care so much about that. The thing that was weird was the taking memos and summarizing your day. This is a feature that companies are trying to come out with, including OpenAI. This, in my opinion, is an Apple stab at Open AI is, hey, we'll summarize your day for you and we'll let you take notes throughout the day. So when you have a meeting, a parent teacher conference or a meeting with work or whatever, we could just automatically summarize all your data in an endto-end encrypted manner and uh your privacy is secure because it's hosted locally blah blah blah whatever. Okay, this in my opinion, you know, there there was even a device called Plaude, for example, that would record all day long or there have been wristbands that record all you say all day long and then summarize everything. These companies sell you the idea of privacy, but people forget the most brutal fact of America. If you get sued in America and you have a summary of everything you said at various different meetings, all of that becomes subject to subpoena. They don't have to block like hack into the encryption. They just get a judge that says, "Unlock it, Mitch." and then you are compelled or you're sanctioned by a court for destroying evidence. So literally the more of these summaries you take, the more you jeopardize people you're having meetings with by taking summary notes of them. So that just from like a legal and like banking and finance compliance point of view. Kind of dumb. Yes, you can disable it. It's useful for most people who aren't worried about compliance or things being taken out of context or whatever. But remember how I said I like the meta glasses? When I wear the normal meta glasses, I actually find myself taking them off when I talk to people because I don't want people to feel like I'm recording every word that they're saying. Humans become less humans or less human in my opinion when they know they're under the microscope. They have to watch everything they're saying because somebody else's Apple Watch is going to transcribe everything they're saying and they just can't be themselves because somebody's always listening. And in this case, it's literally people putting summaries of all of their conversations into the day. That I think actually makes this less wearable. If I now go into a really important meeting with somebody, am I going to feel compelled to wear the Apple Watch because of the signal that it sends them that, oh, I got to listen, you know, or or they might be recording everything I'm saying? I don't know. You know, it's it's a thought that comes up now that didn't before. Kind of like me taking off the uh, you know, meta glasses. I know a lot of people are like, "Ah, what do I care?" You know, like, "I'm never going to get sued this, that, or whatever." Yeah, I hope you don't. You know, it's it's crazy what uh what how how lawsuits function. Uh and so I just think to myself, if you don't have it written down and don't have it documented, you just don't have to worry about what you said 50,000 meetings ago. It's crazy. But now you have to worry about what everybody else is recording. Kind of crazy. Okay. What I did think is really cool is I actually got the Whoop band gifted to me. Thank you, by the way. Uh but uh not by Whoop. Um and I bought the subscription and then I got the Aura Ring. I love that it has like these readiness features and uh the heart rate variability features. Apple just destroyed them. I actually did a full breakdown on the Aura Ring financials. Uh if you want to see it, you could just type into YouTube meet Kevin Aura Ring IPO uh and you'll see it. The video is called Major Red Flags uh in the uh Aura Ring IPO. Right. This is a new IPO coming up. I think they're trying to IPO using their last year's sales because they suspected that Apple was about to kill them. >> Aura Ring just filed. >> Oh, there it is. Okay. So, what's going on with the Aura Ring? The Aura ring gives you something called heart rate variability sensing. Uh, and heart rate variability sensing via the Aura Ring measures the differential in your heart rate every 5 minutes. Apple is now coming out with exactly the same thing at exactly the same interval of heart rate sensing. Now, they're going to measure your normal heart rate more frequently, uh, which is great. Every 5 seconds, it used to be 100 seconds, I believe. They'll measure your heart rate, but heart rate variability is now matching the Aura Ring. So, you're kind of now killing the Whoop and the Aura wearable functionality of better sleep tracking, readiness tracking, stress tracking, uh, and heart rate variability, which is what goes into these variables with the new watch. That's cool if you care about that. I personally have found a lot of the those health stats, which I've tracked them all like a maniac, uh, many times. I sort of go into these little phases. I've done the glucose monitoring. I've done all these things. I personally don't think that I need to collect that data all the time. You drive yourself more crazy collecting all that data all the time. And and the benefits after you use them a few times, you're kind of like, "All right, I get it. This is what it's measuring. This is how it works. Wow, if I run more, my V2 goes up. What a shocker, right?" Uh, it's cool, but I, you know, I'm not super sold that all that stuff is like really long-term necessary. Is it worth upgrading on? Maybe I do like in the Apple Watch that they're going to have uh, you know, faster COM technology inside of it, faster chipsets for especially unlocking that iPhone Duo. Uh, and the new iPhone Pro Max 18 and regular A will have faster airdropping, which is really useful because airdropping, I don't know what it is, has gotten really freaking slow. Anyway, that's sort of where my head is on the watch, uh, on the Duo. big fan of the Duo. I want to be clear with the Duo. I I think it's a buyable device. I I would buy it. I probably I'm like 99% sure I'm gonna buy it. Uh again, the stylus function doesn't come out until the end of the year, which I thought was weird that that wouldn't launch with this. And I don't know that I'm going to need to have another Pro Max. Like I almost kind of think the meta is going to be you have like the duo for work or travel and then you have either like a small basic iPhone uh or even the uh thin version. They're coming out with a second version supposedly in the spring and you bounce between those two or just use the duo as your daily driver or just don't buy any of it. Whatever. We'll talk about the stock implications in just a moment, but that's where my head is. On wearables, they're also coming out with the biological age features, which is literally a ripoff of the wearables. And they're having a thing where now you don't have to go on exercise outside to measure your V2. V2 generally tracks your GPS uh distance moved and your heart rate. And then they can calculate what they think your V2 is. Now they have a thing where you can run in place almost like you're playing the Wii Fit and it'll measure your V2. This whole health app won't be released until later this year, but I thought that was really interesting because it's like now we're stealing from the Wii Fit, we're stealing from the wearables and as usual Apple will probably do it all better. So kind of cool. And then of course they'll have new bands and you know for the watch and cases and all that kind of generic stuff. Who cares? Okay, just my core takeaways. I'm not trying to read you every single stat. I do like that the what they probably did with the, you know, prior thin version of the iPhone is they utilize the tech in that to help build the Duo because they talk about this aerospace titanium frame and how thin it is. It's way thinner than the normal iPhone because they've compressed a lot of the chipset into the uh camera lens area. You won't have as many camera lenses. Personally, don't care. Don't use all three anyway. Normal wide shots fine. I do like the variable aperture that they talked about in the iPhone Pro and Pro Max. That's really useful if you're trying to take like a portrait selfie with a bunch of folks or you're trying to get a good picture with a bunch of people in it. It's very common that the current iPhone kind of like fades between focus between two different people. So, you're trying to get the nice blur, but then you're blurring one person out and the other and you're kind of like trying to do this to get the shot. Kind of annoying. That's what they're trying to solve with a variable rate uh or variable aperture, which is basically how much light the lens actually lets in. Smart. It's cool. The Duo is the showstopper here, though. The, you know, do I really care about 20% faster CPU, 40% faster GPU on the Pro via the A22 nanometer chip, and having 50% more memory bandwidth, or a slightly better battery? Not. Or this variable aperture, not really. Is it going to be useful for people who are making like video content that's more than just talking head or generic like my stuff? Sure. But I think for the vast majority of people, the duo is freaking awesome. Like the the Duo is great. I think there are a lot of functional purposes for that. Love the idea of like setting it up and having it stand up itself as well and then have its display on that uh one hertz refresh cycle, right? the always on display that you have for example on the iPhone which this just woke up so it made it look like it was turning on but uh it always looks like it's off because it's lying down on a table somewhere and so you know I see like that sort of angle of it but if you could stand it up you could have more of this sort of laptop that's in your pocket all the time and you set it up for that always on display for notifications or whatever. I'm excited about that. you know, we didn't get any kind of like new HomeKit tools or whatever, like a standalone HomeKit wall monitor for your cameras or smart devices or whatever. But I think this was a pretty impressive release for Apple, and I'm a big fan with the majority of this. There's some features I will turn off or feel uncomfortable using, but that's me. Overall, I think this is a pretty good leap forward. I don't like that the Duo doesn't have Face ID. That'll come in the future. I'll get over it. I got over it with the Miniish. I still complain every time like, "Come on, man. Come on." Because if your finger gets sweaty, you get some dirt on it. It's just like not as functional as your face. I It's annoying. Unlock with watch is fine if you're wearing your watch all the time. I usually do, just not when I'm recording. I don't know why it feels misplaced. I think I have this like sense that when I'm in the office, I have this mental memory that put it on the charger because the darn thing dies all the time even though it's the Ultra 3. So, I've sort of mentally programmed myself if I'm at a certain location, put it in charger. That way, it stays charged all the time. So, I'm excited about this. I think this is overall very good. Now, how does this affect the stock? So, the stock itself is not cheap. It's relatively pricey and one of the reasons it's driven up in my opinion into sort of this pricey element tier, if you will. It's trading for a 3.69 peg with 9 and a halfish% analyst expected growth average over the next four years. You know, this is trading for over a three peg. Price to earnings ratio in the future is over 30 and growth is under 10. That's over a three peg when you divide the two. That's pricey relative to other companies you can buy. Tesla and cyber security plays are a little bit more expensive. But this could be because markets are anticipating Apple's growth is going to be a lot higher. Myself included. I think Apple will probably grow because of this. Yes. Is the Duo going to cannibalize some iPad sales? Yes. but it's new enough to where your incremental iPad buyer already has like two or three iPads sitting around. They're not excited about buying a new iPad. They're excited about buying the Duo because it's something new. And the phone swap thing does open the potential for people who want to use two phones. One for home, you know, basic stripped of all the annoying apps and notifications, all the other crap, and it's smaller and lightweight. Uh, and then one that has everything that you need for work, the stylus, the full app functionality, you know, whatever else we talked about. I think there are going to be some people who go for that. And I think that iPhone handoff feature and the Duo do open up a growth vertical that is not priced into the stock. Even though the rumors priced in, too many people are like, "Ah man, whatever, dude. Who cares?" Like Siri AI, that's that's where the next level of growth is. No, dude. Like, everybody who uses Siri today knows it sucks and people aren't buying the iPhone or whatever for for that, you know, voice assistant. I'm trying not to trigger the name. People are buying it for the hardware. And so, Siri getting better is like by default. We're all like, "Okay, we know one day it'll be better. It's not good yet. One day it'll be better." So, I think this actually opens up a new growth uh category. Uh, it definitely eats a lot of the wearables market, which is a win for Apple, uh, via the Ultra 3, although that whole Apple Health and AI advisor stuff isn't coming out until the end of the year. That'll be kind of cool. I do like that. I'd like to see Apple's versions of right, you know, suggested notifications or suggested workouts or this that or whatever. I do think that's cool. Uh, overall, I'm impressed. This is This event is exactly what I wanted and more. like the handoff feature wasn't in the rumors. The reality to me that I could set this up as a tripod or to entertain my children while I take photos with them, those are all bonuses. The health updates on the watch, exactly what I was expecting. Uh they are going to lose some iPhone Pro Max users. You know, I'm not going to buy the 18 Pro Max cuz I don't need it anymore. Maybe I'll get the new thin one, but uh I'll get a Duo. And I think that's kind of what a lot of people will do. And now all of a sudden you just moved me up from a $1,200 phone buyer to a $2,000 phone buyer. So you you just increased your revenues on me at the lowest storage level by 66%. These things are going to have shortages. I think they're going to sell out way faster than people think. And and it's actually very impressive. And Apple's growth is probably going to get written up. Is it going to get written up to justify a 3.6 pack? Probably not. you know, it's still a rich valuation. We got a lot of, you know, geopolitical concerns, interest rate concerns, you know, all that bull crap or whatever. But personally, I'm very excited about this when this rerates the growth for the stock. You know, if we get to 15%, it's a fair price to buy Apple even today. if we rerate this because OpenAI is going and buying all the uh Mac Ult out there, you know, they could get to the 20% growth and all of a sudden they're going to look cheap because if I get 20% growth on Apple here, we'll do the actual math on it in just a moment. Uh and then I want to show you some of the other things that this also unlocks, we'll uh we'll pull up their latest uh financial statement, but uh let's see here. Apple AAPL. Okay, so earnings per share that we have on the forecast are $883 and forecast growth for the next four years per analyst expectations 873 next year on EPS 1128 thereafter 1079 thereafter 841 thereafter divided by 4 gets me to 9.8% 8% growth, right? So, I'm at a $317 stock, let's say, divided by 8.83, that puts me at 35.9 times. It's pricey, but if I divide Well, if I divide it by nine on a growth scale, you know, I'm closer to a four peg. I rounded a little bit there. Uh, if I divide it by 20% earnings per share growth because they can jack those margins up, then all of a sudden, the stock is only trading for a 1.79 penn. That in my opinion means the stock actually has some upside in it of about 50%. So if I add 50% to 317 bucks, I'm sitting at almost $500, 476 bucks and and this is the kind of stock that in my opinion you don't have to buy and worry about are they going to like fail to innovate and go be bankrupt. Are they going to be late? Yes. But are they going to totally fail to innovate and go bankrupt uh and get replaced by AI? No, this is a great fracking company. Uh, so I personally am very excited about it. I like the product release. I think it's a creative to what they're doing. And I believe that as memory costs come down in the future, Apple's actually going to keep these higher price points. And guess who picks that up in margin? Apple. Apple picks it up. So that's my take. Oh, and somebody now is announcing that check the duo pricing at $3,199 for two terabytes. Yeah, I don't think um most people are going to need two terabytes. I think that's a little excessive. Uh I think that some 4K filmers will, but I think they're going to be using the Pro Max. That's that's sort of their, you know, target audience there with a variable uh aperture lens. But if I go to the settings on the phone that I have, uh, I have, well, let's see here about general boot, you know, like Canadian. I got 512. I'm okay with 512. It starts at 256 at 1999, you know. Would I And what's my my load on this? I How full am I? Cuz I Everybody hates running out of space on this crap. I have 143 available. I honestly would probably go for like a 24.99 25.99 version at 1TB, whatever that actual price is. I could be convinced to go up to 1TB, but I don't think two is entirely necessary. So, that's overall my take. Optimistic. I like what's going on here. Obviously, we got um uh you know, there'll be a lot of analyst rerating and expectations here, but for me, this is uh this is a fantastic move by Apple. And frankly, uh good job to them. Why not advertise these things that you told us here? I feel like nobody else knows about this. >> We'll we'll try a little advertising and see how it goes. >> Congratulations, man. You have done so much. People love you. People look up to you. >> Kevin Praath there, financial analyst and YouTuber. Meet Kevin. Always great to get your take.