[nobody314159]

No - it's saying Apple routinely lies about it's expected earnings so that every quarter there is a headline saying "Apple earnings beat expectations"

So the street takes Apple's figures and add 20% because they know Apple always understates by 20%, so on those figures Apple didn't do as well as they should have.

The problem is that you don't know if Apple really expected $30Bn and under-performed or really expected $25Bn and over-performed.

Apple is a public company with shareholders and has a legal(and moral) duty to actually produce honest figures. Ultimately massaging them down is just as bad for investors as talking them up.

[Steko]

No there's a huge difference between lying and what Apple does. Apple produces extremely conservative figures that take into account all sorts of negative things that can impact the quarter like some Foxconn factory blows up or gets shut down.

[nobody314159]

If your estimates are always 20% under what you achieve every quarter then you are either deliberately underestimating or your CFO is an idiot.

If you are deliberately underestimating to be conservative - so if there is an earthquake in Japan you can still make the expectation, or you do it to produce a headline, it's equally bad for your shareholders.

Otherwise why not produce figures saying we might sell nothing next quarter -if an asteroid wipes out all life on earth.

Of course it's still a nice position to be in compared to a company lies about making a profit next quarter hoping for a miracle!

[chugger]

these "estimates" are artificially inflated by hedge funds with short positions in AAPL.

AAPL didn't lie. they're just conservative.