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The Apple shares has dropped close to 6 per cent over the past week despite a record profit of close to USD 9 billion in the latest quarter the culprit being the rumours about the company's chief Steve Jobs not keeping well.
The shares plunged another 2.6 per cent yesterday, although the stock is still trading with a gain of close to 4 per cent over a six-month period.
The company's reaction to the rumours last week, terming Jobs' health as a "private matter" seems to have added further fuel to the speculations, although Apple executives are now reportedly saying that issue has been "highly exaggerated." Irrespective of the truth in these rumours, analysts believe that health of a company CEO is certainly crucial to the company's financial as well as stock market health, more so, if there is no clear succession plan in place.
In its latest quarterly filing with the market regulator SEC, Apple has said its "success depends largely on its ability to attract and retain key personnel." "Much of the company's future success depends on the continued service and availability of skilled personnel, including its CEO, its executive team and key employees in technical, marketing and staff positions," the filing stated.
"Experienced personnel in the technology industry are in high demand and competition for their talents is intense, especially in the Silicon Valley, where most of the company's key employees are located," it added.
The filing added there could be no assurance that Apple would continue to successfully attract and retain key personnel. While these are some of the standard risk factors in regulatory filings by the listed companies, the concerns have been mounting over Jobs' health in the recent past, as indicated by various media reports also.
In a report, the US business daily Wall Street Journal said Apple's refusal to discuss Jobs's health is worrying investors, "causing them to scurry for what information they can get while asking just when an iconic CEO's health becomes material for a company." In the past also, investors had been worried after it was disclosed in 2004 that Jobs had pancreatic cancer. The disease was reportedly disclosed to the shareholders only after nine months and that too after a successful surgery for its cure.
According to the WSJ report, one hedge fund hired private investigators in 2004 to tail Jobs to hospital appointments in the hopes of figuring out how sick he was. The report quoted a portfolio manager at the fund as saying that eventually Jobs "seemed to catch on" and became harder to track.
More recently, fund managers have talked of asking doctors to closely analyse pictures of Jobs to monitor changes in his physical appearance, and have been talking about once again hiring investigators to find out Jobs's prognosis, the report added.
The latest round of rumours is reported to have started after Jobs made a "gaunt" public appearance when unveiling iPhone 3G last month. Apple blamed this on a "common bug." When analysts asked about Jobs' health in a conference call on Monday to discuss Apple's quarterly results, the company CFO Peter Oppenheimer said Jobs had "no plans to leave Apple," while adding that "Steve's health is a private matter."
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