Facebook and its $100 billion valuation, although by far the largest on our list, is just one of many IPO potentials which will be in high demand. A new stock exchange, a host of online media outfits, a giant casino, big name retail, and private equity are all trying trying to have successful IPOs in 2012. You do not have to be an approved Second Market account holder or a venture capitalist to have a stake. Investors in 2012 can invest through business development outfits like GSV Capital Corporation (NASDAQ: GSVC), which owns shares of Facebook and Twitter, and Keating Capital, Inc. (NASDAQ: KIPO). These pre-IPO funds were not available ahead of many of the top 2011 IPOs. There is even the First Trust US IPO Index (NYSE: FPX) fund for investors looking at other investment strategies around IPO investing.

But other than those listed here, there are many other potential IPO candidates waiting in the wings. Among the private equity’s past giant leveraged buyouts are Univision and Clear Channel in media and TXU in power and electricity, which could all be potential IPO candidates if and when the market will accommodate them. Also, such companies as the fashion-deal site called Gilte Groupe, the “Angry Birds” video game maker Rovio, and others are also waiting in the wings with possible IPOs.

24/7 Wall St. has compiled a detailed review of each of the expected top IPOs for 2012. We have included details on the finances, backers, related entities, financial terms, the size of the IPO, and even the underwriting groups.

1.  BATS Global Markets, which was founded in 2005, first filed to become a public company in May of 2011. The company, which started as an alternative to the NYSE for equities trading in Europe and the U.S. is now the third largest equity exchange in America and operates the second largest pan-European multilateral trading facility. As such, this IPO is is a key one for investors of exchanges and trading platforms. BATS plans to raise up to $100 million through the offering. More than 90% of the company’s revenues come from trading U.S. equities. These days it is also a primary listing venue, meaning it can conduct IPOs. The global operator of stock and options markets plans to list its shares on its own exchange rather than the NYSE under the ticker BATS. The offering will have a dual-class share structure and the bankers are listed as Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Credit Suisse.

2.  Caesars Entertainment Corporation filed for its IPO in late 2011. This IPO is a holdover from the private equity buyout days when the company tried to go public but later retracted the offering. No exchange was specified nor was a ticker set in the filing. As of September 30, 2011, the company owned or operated 52 casinos in a dozen U.S. states and seven countries under the brand names of Caesars, Harrah’s and Horseshoe with a total gaming space of 3 million square feet and about 42,000 hotel rooms. Caesars Entertainment is what’s left of the massive $9.3 billion buyout by Apollo Global Management, LLC (NYSE: APO) and TPG in 2005. Sales in the first nine months of 2011 were more than $6.6 billion and operating income was was over $600 million, with a net loss after items of $467 million. Private equities and casino operators are paying close attention to this IPO. If the real size of the overall company is too large, perhaps the private equity firms may consider breaking the underlying companies up into separate offerings and utilize a ‘keiretsu’ approach under a network of companies.

Read Also: DJIA 2012 Gain of 12% Projected

3.  The Carlyle Group, L.P. filed to raise up to $100 million in securities in September 2011. As one of the best known names in the world of private equity IPO be one to watch, for investors and other private equity companies. No ticker and no exchange were designated in the filing, but the company named J.P. Morgan, Citi, and Credit Suisse as the lead underwriters. With more than $150 billion in assets under management, this private equity giant is a key player in real assets, global market strategies, and now also in funds of funds after buying a 60% equity interest in AlpInvest. With several private equity companies already publicly traded, Carlyle has been an IPO candidate group for years.

The Census Bureau is out with the 2010 figures on income, poverty, and health insurance.  About all you can hope for is that 2011 is magically better than 2010 because many of the figures are literally eye-popping.  We have higher poverty rates, lower median income, higher uninsured rates, greater racial inequality, and even more young adults depending upon mom and dad than most of us have ever seen.

24/7 Wall St. has gone through the figures released by the Census Bureau today and removed much of the noise to focus on the larger issues that affect most of America.  That also means that much of the data affecting smaller groups or measuring other metrics was eliminated. When you consider the direction of the current economic data compared to earlier this year and the risks of another recession growing more and more, it is alarming.

Median household money income for the nation fell 2.3% to $49,400 in 2010 in real terms, the lowest reading back to $49,112 in 1996 and down from a peak of $53,252 in 1999 and down from a more recent peak of $52,823 in 2007.  The 2010 official poverty rate for the nation was 15.1% in 2010 versus 14.3% in 2009: 46.2 million people in poverty, up 2.6 million since 2009.  The drop in real income the year after a recession was the worst in percentage terms going back to at least the 1960s.

Apparently there is an age-bias on the drop of income as well.  If you fell into the age bracket of 15 to 24, the average income was down a whopping 9.3%.  There was a 1.9% drop in household income for those 25 to 34 years old and there was no significant change in the age group of 35 to 44 years old.  Then came the second largest drop of 4.3% in those aged 45 to 54, yet there was no significant drop in the 55 to 64 and the 65 and older brackets.

Women now earn about 77% as much as men and that appears to have been one of the best ratios going back 50 years.  The rate of households with children is also atrocious.  Married-couple families are at 8.8%, but single-mother households ticked back up again to a decade-plus high of 40.7%.

By race, the poverty rate appears to have ticked up for all but Asians.  Black was 27.4% in poverty, Hispanic was 26.6% in poverty, Asian was 12.1%, and white was 9.9%.  Age is the worst feature of all… 22% of those under 18 years old now live in poverty.

The doubling-up, those households with children above 18 years old rose substantially as well.  This measure was from 2007 to 2011.  There was a 25.5% gain in those of age 25 to 34 living with their parents, and the total number was up 10.7%.  The doubled-up households grew to 21.8 million in 2011 from 19.7 million in 2007.  The number of young adults aged 25 to 34 who live with their parents grew from 4.7 million in 2007 to 5.9 million in 2011.

Real median household income was down to $49,400 to the lowest reading in more than a decade and the poverty rate was back at a cycle peak of 15.1%.  The number of those in poverty was a real high (with population growth) of 46.2 million in 2010.

People without health insurance coverage in 2010 was basically the same as 2009 at 16.3%, but the number of uninsured rose to 49.9 million in 2010 versus 2009′s reading of 49.0 million.  Of all people in America without health insurance, the reading rose to 16.3%, but the rate of children without health insurance was 9.8%.  Government coverage rates continued to rise and those with employment-based coverage fell to 55.3% and those with any form of private coverage was 64.0%.  Those two compared to 62.1% and 75.5%, respectively, in the late 1980′s.

If you go back to 1999, the 2010 uninsured rates by race were the highest at 30.7% for Hispanic but that is under the 31.9% in 1999 and under the peak of close to 33% in 2006.  Uninsured rates were the highest in 2010 since 1999 for Whites (at 11.7%), Asians (at 18.1%), and Black (at 20.8%).

The uninsured rates were as you would expect, the higher the income the lower the uninsured rates are:

• Over $75K : 8%
• $50K to $75K: 15.4%
• $25K to $50K: 21.8%
• Under $25K: 26.9%

The full PDF is here.

In all seriousness, is the American Dream alive and well?

JON C. OGG

Aetna Inc. (NYSE: AET) Reiterated Buy with $51 target at Argus.
Aixtron SE (NASDAQ: AIXG) Raised to Buy at Goldman Sachs.
Cognizant Technology Solutions (NASDAQ: CTSH) Removed from Conviction Buy List at Goldman Sachs.
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) Raised to Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
Green Dot Corporation (NYSE: GDOT) Raised to Buy at Goldman Sachs.
HollyFrontier Corporation (NYSE: HFC) Reiterated Buy as Value at Zacks.
Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE: ITW) Cut to Underperform at BofA/ML.
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM) Raised to Buy at Goldman Sachs.
Lexmark International Inc. (NYSE: LXK) Cut to Sell at Goldman Sachs.
MeadWestvaco Corporation (NYSE: MWV) Raised to Buy at BofA/ML.
NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) Raised to Overweight at Piper Jaffray.
Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: OPTR) Maintained Outperform as Bull of the Day at Zacks.
Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) Raised to Top Pick at FBR.
Pier 1 Imports, Inc. (NYSE: PIR) Cut to Equal-Weight at Barclays.
Tyco International Ltd. (NYSE: TYC) Raised to Buy at BofA/ML.
Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE: UA) Raised to Outperform at FBR.
Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) Cut to Underperform as Bear of the Day at Zacks.
Visa, Inc. (NYSE: V) Raised to Conviction Buy List at Goldman Sachs.
VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) Raised to Outperform at Credit Suisse.
W.W. Grainger Inc. (NYSE: GWW) Raised to Buy at BofA/ML.

You are invited to join our free daily email distribution list to hear more about analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader and active trader alerts, dividend trends, news on Buffett and other investment gurus, IPOs, secondary offerings, private equity, and more.

JON C. OGG

The first matter of order is that short sellers keep attacking SIRIUS XM. Yesterday marked the short interest report date as of May 13, 2011 settlement date, and that short interest has grown to more than 289.9 million shares short.  This was the fifth consecutive increase in the short interest and is the highest reading in a year.

Mel Karmazin gave a shareholder presentation yesterday.  We summarized the key metrics below:

• The outlook included some $3.0 billion in projected 2011 revenue. a projected $715 million in EBITDA, $350 million in free cash flow, and a growth to 21.6 million total subscribers,
• The company has also shown how its borrowing costs have dropped, with its last bond sale being down to 7.625% on an unsecured basis, down from 9.75% on a secured basis in August 2009.  The new yield is roughly 6.2% as to where the bonds are trading now.  It also has no significant bond maturities until mid-2013.
• As far as net cash after expenses and debt payments ahead, Sirius sees about $707 million at the end of 2011 and about $1.057 billion at the end of 2012.  As far as cash, the company did note that it might consider acquisitions, dividends, or stock buybacks.
• Full presentation here.

We would note that rival Pandora is still too small to even really show up as a SIRIUS XM super-threat.  The problem is that Pandora has filed for an IPO and it remains one of the top-watched stocks on the private market of SecondMarket.

The other issue is the credit rating upgrade from Moody’s, where SIRIS XM saw its credit rating go from B3 to B2 and the ratings agency also raised its probability of default rating from B2 to B1.  These are still far from investment grade but the trend for credit ratings has risen and risen.

When SIRIUS XM hit $2.00, we opined that it was going to likely take a new class of shareholders to keep buying the stock up higher and higher.  Many of the growth metrics were already priced or at least already accounted for when shares went from $1.00 to $1.50, and then to $1.75, and then to $2.00.  Now shares are at $2.32.

It seems that the reason SIRIUS XM keeps rising is that the new shareholders are buying into the growth story more than we and more than others expected.  Growth is hard to come by and the reality is that it is impossible to argue that SIRIUS is one of the top media subscriber services in the country. SIRIUS XM remains a battleground stock.  At $2.32, its 52-week trading range is $0.88 to $2.42.

JON C. OGG

As a reminder, Warren Buffett is the first one to tell you that NET INCOME IS NOT THE ISSUE TO WATCH….. We recently noted, “There was one troubling admission in this last annual report, although it has been known for some time by professional investors… Net income is almost irrelevant when reported.  Yep, it does not matter what Berkshire Hathaway says “net income” is…  Buffett noted in the most recent annual report, ‘Regardless of how our businesses might be doing, Charlie and I could – quite legally – cause net income in any given period to be almost any number we would like.  We have that flexibility because realized gains or losses on investments go into the net income figure, whereas unrealized gains (and, in most cases, losses) are excluded.’“

Buffett put the net income figure as being down to $1.511 billion, a shocking figure on the surface as it is less than half of the $3.633 billion it reported in the first quarter of 2010.  Operating earnings, something which matters more than the net income, also fell to $1.593 billion in the first quarter versus $2.222 billion seen in the first quarter of 2010.  It is the underwriting of insurance that accounts for the bulk of the damage here to operations, and it is the difference in the gains and losses in investments and derivatives that took the most toll on net income. 

The “investment gains and derivative gain/loss” was -$82 million versus a gain of $1.411 billion in the first quarter of 2011.  Here is a brief breakdown of those Q1-2011 after-tax earnings figures (compared to Q1-2010):

• Insurance-underwriting was -$821 million vs, $226 million;
• Insurance- investment income was $952 million vs. $988 million
• Railroad, utilities, and energy was $908 million vs. $505 million
• Manufacturing, services & retail was $558 million vs. $477 million
• Finance was $96 million vs. $69 million
• “Other” was -$100 million vs. -$43 million

Berkshire Hathaway highlighted what the three big culprits were in this underwriting loss: 

• Australian floods and Cyclone Yasi hit $195 million
• New Zealand Earthquake hit $412 million
• Japan’s earthquake hit $1.066 billion

This is one of those things that just happens in the world of insurance.  Buffett said in his most recent annual letter that he expects insurance to be profitable in most years but not all years.  Stay tuned, more will be coming out today.

JON C. OGG

Buffett may be even more upbeat this year than last year and probably be 180 degrees better than he was in 2009.  Buffett will also have to again explain how Berkshire Hathaway’s book value changes have underperformed the S&P 500 Index during the rally… The 2010 gain was 13.0% at Berkshire versus 15.1% for the S&P 500, while the 2009 gain was 19.8% versus 26.5% for the S&P.  Maybe Buffett should just point out the obvious that Berkshire Hathaway looks more and more like the weighting of a bond index AND the S&P 500 Index rather than just the S&P 500…The bird in the hand is that Berkshire Hathaway book value was “only” down 9.6% in 2008 while the S&P 500 suffered a whopping loss of 37% and Berkshire Hathaway’s book value rose more than the S&P 500 Index in 2007, 2006, and even 2005.

As of today, we do not yet have the book value per share for the first quarter.  That book value per A-Share was $95,453.00 versus a share price of $120,450.00 at December 31 and versus $124,450.00 as of Tuesday’s closing bell price.  We expect the earnings release to come shortly before the annual meeting this weekend, so we’ll expect an updated book value.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) is a position that Buffett will not have to deal with now.  Last year his shareholders acted dumbfounded in silence when Buffett defended Lloyd Blankfein by saying he just wished that Blankfein had a twin brother he could hire.  Goldman Sachs has repaid that 10% preferred investment from late-2008, but by our count he still holds those warrants and will use them opportunistically.

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) has a longer lock-up period on being able to call away those 10% preferred shares bought in late-2008, and we would expect to hear Warren Buffett telegraph that he expects GE to call the shares away.

The one other big issue we will go ahead and get out of the way is the recent fiasco regarding the David Sokol departure.  He went from being considered by Wall Street as a potential Warren Buffett successor to an ‘insider-insiderless’ trading scandal overnight due to his personal stock trading ahead of and into the Lubrizol Corporation (NYSE: LZ) merger.  Our take, particularly after seeing the reaction from our own independent reader survey, is that this will simply go away… over 49% said it will only affect David Sokol and over 34% said that neither Sokol nor Berkshire will likely suffer any real damage.  The issue, though, is far from settled for now since a Berkshire Board Committee said that Sokol mislead Buffett and other top executives about his stock trading ahead of the Lubrizol deal.

Another portfolio change we expect to hear more about is the BNSF giant railroad acquisition.  This transformed the company, and Buffett has claimed on multiple occasions that this acquisition went far better than he expected.

Our take is that  Ajit Jain seems to be the favorite, if you trace sentiment internally, as Buffett was quoted in a prior annual letter: “If Charlie (Munger), I and Ajit are ever in a sinking boat – and you can only save one of us – swim to Ajit.”  In the most recent annual report, Buffett was quoted as saying, “Ajit has created an insurance business with float of $30 billion and significant underwriting profits, a feat that no CEO of any other insurer has come close to matching. By his accomplishments, he has added a great many billions of dollars to the value of Berkshire. Even kryptonite bounces off Ajit.”

Buffett is also expected to highlight at least some updates to his quarterly holdings, although he is not bound to address anything more for another two and a half weeks when his quarterly filings are required to be made.  As of our latest report, the top holdings were The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), American Express Company (NYSE: AXP), and Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG).

His  March 15 letter called for the bank to run on a fortress-style balance sheet, played down any new mergers and stuck by his commitment to raise the dividend and to resume share buybacks.

It is curious as to why Moynihan would allow a letter that was likely to be seen by all shareholders to be issued before regulators took action.  We know that Bank of America will eventually get to raise its dividend again.  The question is when.  Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) was allowed to pay a tiny dividend with a yield of less than 0.1% on a split-adjusted basis.

At issue is that BofA’s balance sheet has more unknown liabilities on the mortgage side of the equation back to the Countrywide days.  It is also above the 10% deposit ceiling and it truly is a ‘Too Big to Fail’ bank.  BofA is no JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) nor is it even a Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC).  Those two banks are healthier and that is why they were allowed to boost their payouts.

Moynihan’s quote in the introduction to the annual report noted, “We also believe… this model will enable us to put in place a prudent capital management strategy in the near future that, pending regulatory approvals, includes a higher dividend and stock repurchases.”

When we see news like this we at least question what on earth management and the communications departments might have thought.  Perhaps this was simply a decision on formatting and printing as this was part of the annual report.

We’ll skip over being too critical and we won’t call anyone delusional on this one here because it feels and looks like the firm had already made its commitment to its annual report.  BofA will get to raise its dividend, but we do not feel that the Federal Reserve is going to allow a JPMorgan or Wells Fargo type of dividend hike.

Our guess is that 20% of the bank’s future income will be allowed to be used for dividends and share buybacks in late-2011 or in 2012 with more to follow in 2013 and 2014.  That is assuming that a recession or bank losses do not come back in and interrupt the return to a normalization of bank earnings and operations.

JON C. OGG

The first issue we want to note is that if you go through Buffett’s most recent portfolio changes, he made more sales than in any recent quarter we have seen.  This raised loads of cash and now Buffett is looking for another “whale of a deal” or something like it.  While we would not expect another BNSF-sized deal, Bershire Hathaway’s cash and cash equivalents registered a whopping $38.2 billion at the end of 2010.  We want to address the 13% gain in the book value of $95,453 per share later.

Before bashing old Warren on derivatives like you have seen before, Berkshire Hathaway’s derivative gains registered $2.17 billion in the fourth quarter.  Buffett also unwound 8 contracts late in 2010 for a $222 million gain in the quarter.  This was just one factor that led to a total earnings gain of 43% to some $4.4 billion in fourth quarter profits.

If you want to know how the latest whale of a deal worked out in the Burlington Northern buyout, it is supposedly working even better than he expected.  Buffett claims that the earnings power is being boosted by almost 40% pre-tax and more than 30% after-tax.

Buffett sees a better business climate in 2011.  The question is whether or not he will overpay for his next megadeal  As far as dividends, we have no promise that Berkshire Hathaway will pay one.  Our belief is that Buffett will still focus on steady industries rather than riskier high-growth industries.

As the eternal optimist, Buffett argues that America’s best days are ahead.  He is still wary of borrowing money and on the earnings reported by some companies.  Buffett also noted that the performance of the past has little chance of being repeated due to the size of Berkshire now.

Investors have yet another year with no formal succession plan in place for Warren Buffett.  We all know that cannot go on forever.  The new portfolio manager Todd Combs is going to manage $1 to $3 billion in equity positions, without being limited solely to equities.

We want to go back to one thing here. The 13% in annual book value gains to $95,453, this lagged the S&P yet again.  With many components being less market oriented, some of this is no shock.  Buffett also noted in his letter, “some of our businesses are worth far more than their carrying value on our books.”  For instance, At GEICO alone Buffett noted that GEICO’s premium volume is $14.3 billion and growing, yet the goodwill of GEICO is carried as only $1.4 billion on the books.  Buffett said “the real value of GEICO’s economic goodwill” is about $14 billion.  The share price is $127,550.00 for the A-shares now, giving Buffett a hefty premium if you do not consider some of these book value anomalies.  Another part of the premium is because Berkshire Hathaway was added to many indexes and index-funds had to acquire large sums of A and B shares whether they wanted to or not.

A few things that investors need to consider about Berkshire Hathaway after 2011.  Both General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) have every intention of paying off that 10% preferred investment that Buffett made during the market meltdown.  Buffett has exited Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) entirely and the Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) stake is now a whopping total of more than 342 million shares.  If Wells Fargo is the same share count, that was worth $11.08 billion as of Friday’s close.

It would be very easy to just bash Buffett for underperforming the S&P 500 in book value growth again or for Berkshire Hathaway shares trading at such a large premium to book value.  Unfortunately, those ‘facts’ come with caveats and asterisks and are not necessarily representative of the full story.

We also wonder whether Buffett’s goal of growing book value faster than the S&P 500 is even fair, let alone possible.  Much of Berkshire’s empire is income oriented in stable business that just do not grow at nor can they ever grow at the same rate of say Apple Inc.  (NASDAQ:  AAPL).  Perhaps the biggest measurement will come from how Berkshire Hathaway does in the next market correction.  If it holds up better than the broad market then investors know they have a winner.  If it performs worse than the market in a downfall and lags in an upswing, then Berkshire Hathaway may be irrelevant.

JON C. OGG

In our review we have taken out ten of these lesser-known factoids for review and added color where appropriate.

Regions today… Here is the current breakdown of branches by state: Alabama-244; Arkansas-100; Florida-397; Georgia-142; Illinois-68; Indiana-64; Iowa-13; Kentucky-16; Louisiana-118; Mississippi-147; Missouri-67; North Carolina-9; South Carolina-36; Tennessee-263; Texas-85; Virginia-3….FOR A GRAND TOTAL of 1,772.  As of December 31, 2010, Regions and its subsidiaries had 27,829 employees.  Total salaries and employee benefits increased $49 million, or 2 percent, in 2010. The year-over-year increase in salaries and employee benefits cost is due to higher pension and 401(k) expense as explained below. Although salaries and benefits expense increased, headcount was reduced approximately 2 percent in 2010

Financial Summary… At December 31, 2010, Regions had total consolidated assets of approximately $132.4 billion, total consolidated deposits of approximately $94.6 billion and total consolidated stockholders’ equity of approximately $16.7 billion.  The bank’s market cap as of Thursday’s close was $9.3 billion.  Also, don’t forget that it owns Morgan Keegan & Company with approximately 1,200 financial advisors offering products and services from over 321 offices.  It also owns Regions Insurance Group, Inc., Regions Equipment Finance Corporation, and some reinsurance operations.

Available capital… Regions had interest-bearing deposits in other banks of $4.9 billion, and the loan-to-deposit ratio was 88 percent; borrowing capacity with the Federal Reserve Discount Window was $16.6 billion based on available collateral and borrowing capacity with the FHLB was $1.2 billion based on available collateral. During 2010, the provision for loan losses decreased to $2.9 billion compared to $3.5 billion in 2009. Regions noted on its capital ratios, “The minimum guideline to be considered well-capitalized for Tier 1 capital and Total capital is 6.0 percent and 10.0 percent, respectively. At December 31, 2010, Regions’ consolidated Tier 1 capital ratio was 12.40 percent and its Total capital ratio was 16.35 percent.”

Revenues from Royalties… Most consider that SanDisk gets its all of its revenues from manufacturing and selling NAND Flash, but SanDisk has a royalty business as well.  It noted, “We have an extensive patent portfolio that has been licensed by several leading semiconductor companies and other companies in the flash memory business.  Our cumulative license and royalty revenues over the last three fiscal years were approximately $1.28 billion.” That comes to an average of more than $100 million per quarter in revenues from royalties and the estimate for the coming quarter is $1.25 billion.  Royalty revenues are generally deemed to be much higher in profits and margins than operating revenues.  It noted, “We have various patent licenses with several companies including, among others, Hynix, Intel Corporation, or Intel, Lexar Media, Inc., or Lexar, a subsidiary of Micron Technology, Inc., or Micron, Panasonic, Renesas Technology Corporation, or Renesas, Samsung, Sharp Electronics KK, or Sharp, Sony and Toshiba.” This also declined in the first quarter of last year due to its renewed license pact with Samsung and it noted that there are risks about future renewals as well later in its risks section.

The lack of Apple ties… The only two places that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is mentioned throughout its 10-K is as competition in the digital audio market (iPod versus Sansa).