Below expectations (Previous Quarter results and current quarter projections):
Here's what analysts are expecting, via the Bloomberg Terminal.
Revenue: $49.4 billion
EPS: $1.81
iPhone units: 48.8 million (whisper number is 50 million)
iPad units: 10.9 million
Mac units: 4.9 million
Revenue guidance: $51.06 billion
Revenue and EPS are actually better in their earnings report.
The only thing that’s worse is that they sold 1.3 million fewer iPhones and .1 million fewer Macs. iPads are right on. Revenue guidance is $49b to $51b.
This always happens with Apple, although I admit that 6.31% is a bit on the high side.
In general, Wall Street doesn't act the slightest bit rationally around Apple. No matter how record-breaking Apple's numbers are, there's always some insane analyst that projected even higher numbers, which means everybody then reports Apple as a "miss" (even though they always beat their own estimates, and meet or beat all of the sane analyst predictions, which is most of them). And since it's a "miss", stock drops.
Really, what's more shocking is those very rare times when the stock climbs after-hours after an earnings report (or after the WWDC keynote or the annual September event).
Stock tends to over-react in after-hours trading, I think. I don't do any after-hours trading, but it seems like it usually settles in someplace before market open the next day. I'm not saying it will or anything, but that seems to happen immediately after an earnings report is dropped.
expected 49-51b revenue. rev was at 49.6. i think aapl has been beating rev estimates for a while, while this one was right in the low end of expected
edit: was incorrect on my numbers.
spiralpolitik:
Expected revenue for Q3 was 46-48b (see Q2 earnings press release). So they beat the estimate by 1.6 billion.
The 49-51b number is the Q4 estimate.
The Company posted quarterly revenue of $49.6 billion and quarterly net profit of $10.7 billion, or $1.85 per diluted share. (...) Gross margin was 39.7 percent compared to 39.4 percent in the year-ago quarter.
Investor conclusion: Apple is not doing so well. There is something wrong with the stock market when a company post record profits, almost 40% margin (on electronics) and that's seen as an omen.
I understand it is the opposite, brokers bet earlier that the results would be even better and are now unloading the bets at a lower price (causing the market correction) but even so it is amazing how detached stock brokerage is from investment and how close it is from gambling.
Part of the value of the stock is expected returns, and if the expected returns suddenly change than the value of the stock will suddenly change too. I don't think that it's necessarily an omen.
>but even so it is amazing how detached stock brokerage is from investment and how close it is from gambling.
Funny, I reach the exact opposite conclusion: people were willing to pay a specific price for Apple dependent on the expectations of future earnings. Those earnings didn't meet expectations, therefore the market adjusted the price. Working as intended.
That is completely incorrect. They are right in the middle of revenue predictions. Slightly on the lower end, sure, but that does not qualify as missing by a mile. If you say missing by a mile I would expect at least one standard deviation.
For Apple, that's a miss by a mile, sorry. And it's not like I'm the only one that thinks so -- check the stock price. It doesn't care much about downvotes either.
>>For Apple, that's a miss by a mile, sorry. And it's not like I'm the only one that thinks so -- check the stock price. It doesn't care much about downvotes either.
Pointing to the stock market as some sort of paragon of rationality is not a bright move. You may want to reconsider your stance.
I mean, I get the effect on stock prices and why it happens (people use the best available info and use past experiences with that info to calibrate their expectations) but that’s stock land. Here in the real world that’s not a miss by a mile, it’s just business as usual with no material effects on Apple’s outlook (i.e. this might be a miss by a mile if you trade stocks but that doesn’t mean there are any material consequences for Apple from this).
So people adjust their predictions, stock prices fluctuate, hopefully no one cares because Apple missing predictions by a couple million bucks is materially irrelevant for the company and couldn’t be any more materially irrelevant if it wanted to.
Analysts on average actually did better in predicting Apple’s revenue than Apple. (Apple obviously seems to be very conservative in their predictions, though.)
The analysts' recta have historically been much more accurate than Apple's press releases, which have (as is not atypical in the tech industry) routinely and severely underestimated revenue.