Three Reasons to Bet on Apple Inc. (AAPL) This Week

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) reports tomorrow afternoon, and it’s easy to be concerned.

The stock has lost nearly 40% of its value since peaking the morning that the iPhone 5 came out, and the report isn’t going to be pretty. Wall Street sees flat revenue growth, providing a stark contrast to the years of growth that investors have been relishing. Analysts also see a 21% plunge in profitability, another cruel reminder that margins continue to contract at the iEverything company.

However, there are more than a few reasons to be encouraged — or at least less discouraged — here. Let’s check them out.

1. Apple has been cheaper, but it’s still pretty darn cheap.
It’s not fair to argue that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has never cheaper. If analysts are right, Apple’s trailing earnings per share over the past four quarters will go from $41.89 now to $39.88 tomorrow night. Based on Friday’s close of $424.95, we’re talking a trailing earnings multiple that will expand from 10.1 to 10.7 after tomorrow’s projected 21% slide in net income per share.

However, Apple is still trading at a huge discount to the S&P 500‘s trailing multiple of 19.3. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s multiple also drops to the single digits if you astutely back out its gobs of cash and investments.

Does Apple really deserve to be trading at a discount to the market? As bad as things may be now, do you really think that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) will stay down forever? Have you not seen what the iPod, iPhone, and more recently iPad has done for the company on this side of the millennium alone?

2. It’s not just Apple suffering from consumers gravitating to cheaper smartphones.
One of the things that knocked Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) earlier this year was the sharp decline in average selling prices for its iPhone and iPad devices. In a nutshell, more shoppers are going for the cheaper iPad Mini, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4S that Apple sells for $100 to $200 less than the current generation of devices.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) — this country’s largest carrier — shocked the market back in April by revealing that just half of the iPhones that it activated during the first three months of this year were iPhone 5 models.

Some feared that it was an Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) problem, but clearly it’s not.

Investors were shocked to learn that Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) shipped just 2.7 million phones running its updated BB10 mobile operating system in its latest quarter. The number was brutal, but lost in the math is that it shipped 6.8 million total Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) smartphones. In other words, the vast majority of devices it shipped weren’t the latest Z10 and Q10 devices.

Even the mighty Samsung has reportedly struggled to move the 3-month-old Galaxy S4, with Android fans perfectly fine taking advantage of the cheaper prices on older devices.

Average selling prices should head lower at Apple on Tuesday, and that’s perfectly in line with the industry as a whole.