Lex專欄 蘋果爲何有選擇地披露信息

Some stick-in-the-muds complain that Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook may have violated US regulations on fair disclosure by giving a sales update to Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC television’s Mad Money.

一些墨守成規者提出，蘋果(Apple)首席執行官蒂姆錠克(Tim Cook)把一個最新銷售情況透露給了CNBC電視臺Mad Money節目的主持人吉姆克萊默(Jim Cramer)，或許違反了美國關於公平披露的規定。

“Booyah!” to them. Mr Cook’s revelation that Chinese sales growth was “strong” throughout July and August was a welcome palliative to the market mayhem of recent sessions.

他們說的太好了。庫克透露，7月至8月期間，蘋果在中國銷量增長“強勁”。在最近幾個交易日的市場動盪中，這是一副受歡迎的鎮痛劑。

Concerns over the propriety are overdone. There is no suggestion that Mr Cook, unlike one recent New York case, writes market-moving information on paper napkins and has recipients eat them after reading; he chose a well-known TV host to circulate the information broadly.

墨守成規者對庫克此舉是否妥當的擔憂有些過頭了。與最近發生在紐約的另一起事件不同，庫克並沒有把影響市場走勢的信息寫在餐巾紙上，讓收到信息的人閱後即食。他選擇了一位知名電視主持人來廣爲傳播信息。

In a market of fear, where worries over China are dominant — in spite of notoriously unreliable official data — any real data point serves a broader purpose. In his missive, Mr Cook also revealed that “growth in iPhone activations has actually accelerated over the past few weeks, and we have had the best performance of the year for the App Store in China during the last two weeks”.

在一個對中國的擔憂壓倒一切的恐慌市場中，任何真實的數據點都會產生更廣泛的作用——儘管中國官方數據出了名的不可靠。庫克還在其郵件中透露：“過去幾周，iPhone激活量增長實際上加快了。過去兩週App Store在中國取得了今年以來的最佳表現。”

Of course, Mr Cook was not being altruistic. Apple’s shares had plunged to $92, back to the level last hit in June 2014 and previously reached in August 2012. After his intervention, Apple pared its losses.

當然，庫克並非沒有私心。蘋果股價此前跌到了每股92美元，回到了2014年6月曾觸及的水平、也是2012年8月就已達到的水平。在庫克干預後，蘋果的股價收復了一些失地。

Yet Apple shares are weak. Analysts’ price targets of about $150 a share — or a reasonable 15 times forward earnings — are almost 50 per cent above today’s level. Investors are reluctant to buy shares in the world’s most valuable company, whose recent success is based on one spectacular product — the iPhone.

不過，蘋果股價依然偏低。分析師們給出的目標價格是每股150美元左右——相當於15倍的預期市盈率——幾乎比蘋果現在股價高50%。投資者不願購買這家全世界最具價值公司的股票，該公司最近的成功有賴於一個曠世之作——iPhone。

Meanwhile, Apple refuses to say how many of its latest category, the Apple Watch, are being sold.

與此同時，蘋果拒絕透露其最新產品類別Apple Watch的銷量。

If things really are rosy in Cupertino in spite of global economic uncertainty, Apple might consider making more disclosure a matter of course, not an opportunistic — though perfectly reasonable — move at times of strife.

在全球經濟存在不確定性的情況下，如果庫比蒂諾（Cupertino，蘋果總部所在地）真的一切情況良好，蘋果或許會把披露更多信息視作理所當然的事，而不是在紛擾時期的一種投機舉動——儘管此舉非常合理。