On Mar 4, 2006, at 4:10 AM, Aaron Reynolds wrote:
A few years ago Apple nearly went belly up.
Microsoft bought into it and saved it AFAIR.
I don't know if they "saved" Apple, but they made a wise investment
in Apple stock. It was not, as I recall, an overly large chunk of
the company -- 10%? -- and for some reason I think it was around
when the iMac was just hitting it big. In other words, when Apple
were on the rebound.
I tried to convince my family to buy Apple stock when it dropped to
$18 because the company had enough cash in the bank to repurchase
all of its own outstanding shares and was therefore woefully
underpriced. They all scoffed, but now that it's sitting at what,
$70, they realize they should've listened to me.
Wait Aaron: Apple stock dropped to 12.2 at one point in 1997. I
couldn't afford it at the time, but I advised my brother to buy and
he did. It's at $70ish now... after hitting $160 in 2000 for a short
time, falling like everyone else did, then rising again and splitting.
MS injected cash at a key moment and obtained huge rewards from it.
Save the company? Likely not, but it helped a lot, although a lot of
us were not happy to have the evil empire having so much influence.
Godfrey
