发表评论-汪翔-万维博客-万维读者网（电脑版）

Like most things you read on blogs, the accusations, of course, are completely true. It was me, Jim Cramer and Henry Kissinger. We met in Dealey Plaza in Dallas to cook the whole thing up. The Bilderberg Group, the Davos World Forum and Spectre put up the money.

We'd have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those pesky bloggers -- and their dog, Scooby. Drat!

Today, I find myself in the unusual position of defending Apple stock from the sudden deluge of sellers.

If you haven't been living in a cave for the past week, you'll know Apple's stock price recently collapsed to $445, from a peak of $700 last year. Wall Street suddenly discovered that Apple faces competition from companies such as Samsung. And Apple didn't give a confident outlook for the year ahead.

I hesitate to disagree with the market, but in this case, I might make an exception. My job, alas, prevents me from buying any stock I might write about. But if I could, I think I'd be a buyer of Apple stock today.

Put in a nutshell: This is still a fantastically successful company, and the stock is dirt cheap by almost any measure.

No wonder the smart folks at Boston-based money manager GMO had Apple in the top 15 holdings in the portfolio of top-quality U.S. stocks. GMO has a long and excellent reputation of going against Wall Street fashion and buying value stocks. That Apple met its criteria, even at the higher prices seen a few weeks ago, is no guarantee of success, but it is reassuring.

Let's start with the basic numbers. Apple's latest quarterly earnings show the company has $169 billion in cash and liquid assets, and just $69 billion in total liabilities. So the company is basically sitting on $100 billion in cash or equivalents -- about $105 per share. (It has another $24 billion in commitments to buy components and pay leases on retail stores. Including those would change the numbers a bit, but not much.)

In short, Apple isn't really a $445 stock. Net of cash, it's a $330 stock.

That's just seven times forecast earnings of $45 per share for the current fiscal year, which runs through Sept. 30. That's half the rating of the rest of the stock market, which has historically traded at about 14 times forecast per-share earnings.

At current prices, Apple, net of cash, is less than six times forecast cashflow per share.

And that isn't just because margins are currently elevated. Apple, net of cash, is valued at less than twice forecast revenues. Apart from a brief period during the depths of the financial crisis, this is the lowest such rating seen since 2004.

Apple is simply gushing cash each month. The company's operating cashflow was $23 billion -- or $24 per share -- last quarter alone.

Tim Cook, the company CEO, doesn't seem to have the panache (or ability at spin) of his legendary predecessor, the late Steve Jobs. But none of that really matters. What matters is how well the business performs.

Last quarter, net sales were up 18%. Sales in China were up 67%. Revenues from selling iPhones rose 28%, those from selling iPads, 22%.

Apple shouldn't be viewed as a simple technology company. It should mainly be viewed as a luxury goods company -- the LVMH or Tiffany of tech. People pay extra to own an Apple product. Sometimes they pay a lot more. The company's gross margins were 39% last quarter.

It is certainly true that the company faces surging competition for its iPhones, iPads, computers and so on. If Apple stock were expensive, I wouldn't buy it in these circumstances, because that competition will inevitably pressure margins. But it isn't expensive; it's cheap.

Everyone I know who owns an iPhone loves it. Apple customers are fanatics. I know people who have dumped their smartphones from competing platforms and moved to Apple, but I know very few who have gone the other way. What seems to distinguish Apple is their execution. The products seem to be more reliable, and better, than the competition. This is why customers stick around.

For work purposes, I recently bought a tablet on a competing platform. It's been trouble. The software's buggy. I had to wipe the hard drive and reboot twice. The store won't take it back because it's outside the return period. The manufacturer will take it back, but I'll have to ship it off for six weeks. I wasted hours online with their overseas help desk.

There were sound reasons why, in the circumstances, an iPad wouldn't have suited my needs, but I did reflect that if I had purchased one, I'd have found it very easy to get my problem fixed, by going into my local Apple store.

This is a quality company with an amazing brand name, and the stock is cheap. Make of it what you will.