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Anything for a Profit (1/7/98)
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Who's keeping the books? It seems that there was in fact some "creative financial planning" involved in Apple's recently-announced $45 million Q1 profit. According to MacOS Rumors, Apple would have posted a small loss instead of a small profit if not for a special slush fund they had set up last quarter. Basically, Apple artificially inflated last quarter's loss by putting money aside that they could add into the pot for this quarter.
Now, at first, we were pretty dismayed to hear about this; it kind of cheapens the whole profit thing. But Rumors has a point: this shows that Apple's thinking. Given that they were going to post an inevitable and inescapable loss last quarter due to the Power Computing buyout, why not increase that loss to invest in increasing the possibility of a subsequent profit? Apple needed a profit to show Wall Street that it is still a viable company: what looks better, a large loss followed by a small loss, or a larger loss followed by a small profit? Think Clever.
The only thing that really bothers us about this strategy is that it casts serious doubt in our minds about Apple's ability to sustain this profitibility into the current quarter. But with luck, the momentum of the G3's and the CompUSA deal will just keep picking up speed, and maybe Apple can post a 100%-true, no-holds-barred, honest-to-goodness profit next quarter.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 1/7/98 episode: January 7, 1998: (Sorry—this was before we started writing intro text for each episode!)
Other scenes from that episode: 337: Sub-$1K Mac: Still Waiting (1/7/98) So if you're a faithful viewer tuned in from home, you're not the target audience for the sub-$1000 home computer. Why? Because the whole point of the sub-$1K machine is to pull in the other half of the consumer households-- the ones who have not yet purchased a computer... 338: "I Said WHAT? When?" (1/7/98) One of the great joys of living and loving in this Age of Technology is that damn near every fool word you ever "say" via email is etched permanently in stone, metaphorically speaking. That's the sad truth that Lawrence Lessig is learning as Microsoft continues to fight his appointment as Special Master in the "Redmond Justice" case...
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