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Comment by tough | Hacker News Reader

How would it even be possible for apple to do so

Apple's total comprehensive income was $24B in Q2. Their total assets were $332B, and total liabilities $270B. Assuming all product sales dropped to 0, they could make the best effort to liquidate assets, after which they'd only have $62B - which would last them a little over a year at $13.6B in quarterly operating expenses.

https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_financials/2023/q2/...

A fair portion of that quarterly operating expense results in $20 billion a quarter in services revenue. I don't think those numbers intuitively reveal a plausible scenario where they are under in five years.

The link shows ~ < 50% of Apple's liabilities are current; assuming revenue dropped overnight to $0, I doubt they'd need to liquidate any assets, likely for multiple years.

It's an unrealistic & impractical scenario, obviously, but IMO it's more likely they'd want to increase their liabilities (and likely WOULD be able to - lol!) without touching their assets. It's actually an interesting & somewhat comical mind game, even if nothing else.

FWIW, I've no personal position.

I suppose if the product sales dropped to 0, a few mass firings would be in order. That should cut down that $13.6B operating expense drastically :)

China going to war would destroy most of Apple's production bases and this would force people to use Android due to Samsung being the best fabs not involved.

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