Apple Inc.’s shares may have suffered their longest losing streak since 1998 on Monday, but CEO Tim Cook couldn’t be happier. He believes the market overreacted to the company’s earnings results last week, and that China is just going through a rough patch.
The CEO appeared on Jim Cramer’s CNBC show “Mad Money” Monday night to defend the company, however the typically media-shy CEO’s appearance ruffled some feathers. A few people on Twitter even called the interview desperate, while others said it was a pointless interview with Cook adding nothing new to the conversation following’s last week’s earnings conference call.
The interview comes 13 months after Cook’s last appearance on the show, and six months after Cook gave a rare mid-quarter update to Cramer via email about how well Apple was doing in China last summer despite big macroeconomic problems there.
This time, he was more critical on China, but still optimistic. He expressed disappointment in the iPhone 6S, saying that “people are upgrading at a lower rate than they did last year” and said that the Chinese economy is “clearly not as strong as it was a year ago.” The economy is softening, and the currency is weakening, he said, and so “you’ve got a confluence of items in there, some that are Apple specific, some things that are more general that affect everyone.”
However, the CEO once again waved off the macroeconomic concerns, saying that “the market doesn’t need to be growing hugely for Apple to grow.” He also said that it was an error on his part to be so negative on China on the company’s earnings call, given the country’s huge, and growing, middle class.
Cramer ended the interview by telling viewers that they should own Apple stock long term, and not trade it. Cramer, who is also a founding board member of TheStreet.com, runs Action Alerts Plus, a subscription service that gives users an inside look at his charity portfolio, which is on long Apple.
Shares of Apple traded up 0.2% to $93.82 in premarket trade.
This article was originally published on Marketwatch.