Forget the New iPhone. For Apple, It’s All About the Dollar.
By JEFF SOMMER

Don’t obsess about the svelte new iPhone or the price cut for the Apple Watch.

Don’t worry too much about Apple’s courtroom battles over privacy and national security, at least not now. Those issues moved to the back burner on Monday when the Justice Department said that it might not need Apple’s help to break into an iPhone connected to a mass shooting.

Instead, if you’re interested in Apple as the world’s most valuable company, and not just in Apple as a maker of cool gadgets, the biggest news affecting it lately has arguably come from another quarter: the foreign currency markets.

For a reading on where Apple’s share price may be heading, look to the dollar.

The underlying reason is this: The dollar’s rise and fall have a direct effect on Apple’s earnings, which ultimately drive share prices. When the dollar strengthens, sales of iPhones abroad are worth less in American currency, hurting profits and, sooner or later, knocking down share prices. When the dollar weakens, on the other hand, those overseas profits become more valuable.

Despite a partial recovery over the last few days, the greenback has been weakening and Apple’s shares have been rising. Apple has been getting a dollar bonus.

And what’s true for Apple is true for many of the multinationals in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, which declined last year and fell sharply for much of the start of this one. Corporate profits fell 5.1 percent in 2015, the largest drop since 2008, the Commerce Department said on Friday. Profit margins continue to be pressured, but the turn in the value of the dollar gave earnings a nudge upward, helping American multinationals prosper. It is no accident that the S.&P. 500 began to recover in late January, as the dollar began to weaken.

Apple is a case in point. When it reported earnings on Jan. 26, the dollar had been rising for months, and Timothy D. Cook, its chief executive, discussed the repercussions during an earnings call with Wall Street analysts. Two-thirds of “Apple’s revenue is now generated outside the United States,” he said, “so foreign currency fluctuations have a very meaningful impact on our results.”

He illustrated that impact this way: Between the last three months of 2014 and the same stretch in 2015, every dollar’s worth of sales that Apple earned outside the United States lost 15 cents when translated into dollars. In its latest quarter alone, he added, Apple lost six percentage points of sales growth to the rising dollar.

The iPhone is the company’s profit engine, but the strong dollar chipped away at its power. The average sales price for the iPhone globally at the end of 2015 was $691, according to Luca Maestri, Apple’s chief financial officer. But he said the strong dollar reduced the effective sales price by $49, or roughly 7 percent.

Apple’s share price, which buoyed the overall stock market in past years, fell 4.6 percent in 2015 and dropped more than 11 percent through Jan. 27. Since, then, though, Apple shares have risen more than 13 percent.

The dollar’s direction has been changing recently as well. On a trade-weighted basis, after gaining more than 9 percent in 2015, it has weakened by nearly 2.5 percent this year. That has helped American companies with significant international earnings, especially technology companies. Within the S.&P. 500 index, half of that sector’s earnings come from outside the United States.

Compare that with the utility companies in the index: They obtain only 4.4 percent of their earnings abroad. Over the last 12 months, utilities, which pay hefty dividends and have been insulated from the dollar’s fluctuations, have returned 15.5 percent, compared with 6.6 percent for information technology shares. Since late January, tech shares have nearly kept pace with utilities. The decline in the dollar has helped account for that.

Where the dollar heads now is a matter for pure speculation. Clearly, the Federal Reserve’s shifting monetary policy is important. As John Higgins, chief markets economist for Capital Economics, put it, the Fed “appears to have turned more dovish, which has undermined the dollar.” In an election year in which the trade deficit is a major issue, you wouldn’t be sticking your neck out very far in assuming that the Fed might retain a dovish bias and that the dollar might remain fairly weak.

That said, the Fed couldn’t entirely control the dollar’s value, even if it wanted to do so. Foreign exchange rates are determined by traders who compare currencies, many of which have been weakened by their own sputtering local economies and by central banks that have adopted near-zero or negative short-term interest rates. In comparison, the United States may be a bastion of stability, and the dollar could rise.

It is quite possible, in short, that the dollar’s ebb has given companies like Apple only a temporary reprieve. And the dollar is only one ingredient in Apple’s corporate mix. Other transient factors — the iPhone’s shape and power, the Apple Watch’s price and appearance, and the security of Apple’s devices — may play a more dominant role in determining Apple’s fortunes.

Obsess about that if you must, but don’t underestimate the dollar.

蘋果股價 受美元牽動

蘋果近來發布新款iPhone、調降Apple Watch價格、與聯邦調查局（FBI）打起隱私戰等，其實都不是投資人該關心的重點？經濟學家指出，影響這間全球市值最高企業的關鍵因素，反倒來自外匯市場：蘋果股價與美元走勢息息相關。

紐約時報報導，最主要的原因在於，美元的升值或貶值將直接對蘋果獲利產生影響，並在最終驅動股價漲跌。美元走強時，海外iPhone營收換算成美元的價格便會縮水、損及獲利，遲早會壓低股價。美元走弱時，海外獲利則上揚。即使美元過去幾日回升，但近來走貶，蘋果股價也走升。換言之，蘋果享受了弱勢美元的好處。

美元不只對蘋果重要，對標普500指數成分股企業也是如此。標普500指數去年下滑、今年初重挫，根據美國商務部，美國企業去年獲利縮水5.1%，減幅為2008年來最大。雖然毛利率持續承受壓力，但美元轉弱推升企業獲利、助了美國跨國企業一臂之力。標普500指數今年1月底來隨著美元走疲而上揚，絕非意外。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/your-money/forget-the-new-iphone-for-apple-its-all-about-the-dollar.html

2016-03-28．經濟日報．A7．國際．編譯黃智勤