Chowdhry on CNBC.
FORTUNE — “Innovation at Apple is over,” wrote Trip Chowdhry on Oct. 23, the day Apple introduced what would soon became the world’s best-selling tablet computer. “The best is over for Apple. iPad mini is playing catch up to Google Android, probably will have a mediocre customer adoption.”
It was par for the course for Global Equities Research’s curiously wrong-headed Apple (AAPL) analyst. Two months earlier, just days before the Apple v. Samsung jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages, he confidently predicted that no money would change hands.
But Chowdhry outdid himself with the four-point bulletin he issued Sunday. Permit me to excerpt and annotate:
1) Apple has not innovated since the passing away of Steve Jobs.[This four weeks after Apple unveiled what is arguably the most innovative mobile operating system since the original iPhone.]2) The likelihood of Apple being able to come up with innovative product … is very slim, given that the Apple Stock is 40% below its high of $705: This lower stock price is prompting some of the smarter Apple employees to leave Apple for other companies such as Google, which is a very serious problem for Apple.[This a few days after Apple was discovered to be registering the iWatch trademark around the world.]3) Apple has changed from being an innovative company to a company returning cash to the shareholders; and that has completely backfired: … Everyone is wondering who is getting all the Cash? … Some are speculating if Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer will remain at Apple.[Really? Everyone?]4) The current executive team led by Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer have destroyed the shareholder value at Apple: Both, MJN, a baby food company and CLX, a Toilet cleaning company, trade at more than 2x the multiple that of AAPL. Hence most people are quite alarmed that Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer are systematically destroying Apple’s shareholder value.[This is priceless. A sell-side analyst who for eight months has been urging his clients to unload the stock blames the CEO and CFO for destroying Apple’s shareholder value?]
Chowdhry concludes the note by suggesting that Cook and Oppenheimer be replaced with two former Apple executives: Jon Rubinstein, who was CEO of Palm before it was absorbed and forgotten by Hewlett Packard (HPQ); and Fred Anderson, who resigned Apple’s board following a three-month investigation into the company’s option backdating practices.
