The tailwinds behind Apple (AAPL 0.50%) continue to be extremely strong on multiple levels, despite it already being one of the world's leading companies. In this Motley Fool Live segment from "The Rank," recorded on March 14, Fool.com contributors Travis Hoium, Jason Hall, and Danny Vena discuss what the future could look like for the technology giant.
10 stocks we like better than Apple
When our award-winning analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*
They just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Apple wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.
*Stock Advisor returns as of March 3, 2022
Travis Hoium: Yeah, Apple, pretty simple case. The iPhone, I don't think it's going anywhere. My bullish case for a company like Apple and not only is it a cash flow machine, but think about the bolt-on products that it has made that only Apple can make. Aren't AirPods the seventh biggest company in the world by revenue. There's some absurd number like that. Their computers are getting better and better. I just mentioned that their chips now are going to be competitive with graphics cards from Nvidia. I just don't see anything knocking this company off.
As they pulled more of their design for chips specifically in-house, they're already doing the software. That's actually going to become their point of differentiation. It's not going to be, look our operating system looks a lot better than Android like it was 5,6,7,8 years ago. It's going to be, our operating system or our chips are so much faster because they are optimized to run our software. Browsing is going to be better, online gaming is going to be better. I just think the tailwinds behind this company on multiple levels continue to be really strong despite the fact that it's the biggest company in the world.
Jason Hall: The Saudi Aramco maybe sneaking back up though with oil prices where they are.
Travis Hoium: Depending on the day. [laughs]
Jason Hall: Durable, non-cyclical, etc. This is the big one. I want to give you the last word on this one, Danny, but I just want to say the reason I rated it seven is despite everything Travis said being true, it's like Apple today is the same company it was in 1998 in this regard that it has the best processors and the best software. The difference is nothing ran on them in 1998 and now everything runs on them and oh, by the way, everybody carries this in our pocket. It now owns the ecosystem. It now completely owns the ecosystem and it owns us.
I just really feel like there's a little bit of law of large numbers here where yes, it's going to continue to grow and it's going to continue to grow profits and it's not wildly expensive right now. But I just struggle seeing it even with all of those things in its favor being the biggest returner of this group. Actually, I think most of the other ones are probably going to be better investments. Danny, last word.
Danny Vena: I think that Apple, for all that it is and for as big as the company is, I still think it's underrated. In terms of, look at what Tim Cook did a few years back when he said, OK, we're going to double our services revenue within five years and came in ahead of schedule. I think we don't know what Apple's next phase is. We don't know what its next stage of growth is going to involve. It's the thing that we don't know yet that is going to be Apple's next big growth driver.
Jason Hall: Yeah, I think you're right. Honestly, there's a good chance that I'm one of those people doing exactly what you just said.
