“Needham & Co.’s Charlie Wolf this morning raised his estimates for Apple’s (AAPL) for last quarter and for the fiscal year ending this September on an expectation of higher iPhone sales,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
“Wolf, referring to ‘recent reports of blow-out iPhone sales,’ no doubt referring to remarks by Verizon Communications and by AT&T in recent weeks, raised his estimate for last quarter’s iPhone shipments to 28 million from 32 million [sic. strike that, reverse it],” Ray reports. “Consequently, he raised his FYQ1 EPS estimate to $10.85 per share from $9.55.”
Ray reports, “Wolf maintains a Buy rating on Apple shares and a $540 price target.”
Full article, with Wolf’s iPad estimates (also raised), here.
MacDailyNews Note: AAPL earlier this morning hit a new all-time intraday high of $426.77.
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How great are these anal -ists, revising their idiotically baseless initial estimates a week or two before earnings- doesn’t this prove how clueless they are?
Yes. When it comes down to it, they are are reacting to rumor and speculation. They are covering their ass rather than providing clients with meaningful/actionable guidance.
Analysts’ work not to provide their clients with reliable guidance, even though officially it is so. Their work is to hype up stock prices so their clients, bigger institutional shareholders, would be able to sell to manipulated clueless small buyers their Apple stock with good profits right before “disappointing” official results, which would make the stock price low again. After that the same bigger shareholders, analysts’ clients, would be able to buy back the shares again at low price so start the game anew.
So analysts are not useless, they help their clients to earn money. However, their information is not for analytical, but just for manipulative purposes. More correctly these people should be called “manipulators“.
Something to be said for an honest wage for and honest day’s work and even more to be said for the self serving special interest agenda.
Parasites aren’t honest
Anal-ists are useless but how sad are those who follow them. Long Apple…
And mostly they serve simply to damage the stocks up and down price. I mean why not say Apple sold 40, 50, a 100 million, TWO BILLION!!! iPhones this last quarter so predictably the stock can tank again when it doesn’t happen. I wish we could line up these a-holes bent over in a row so we all could march down the line and give each one a solid kick simultaneously in the ass they speak out of and nards.
These crazy overestimates are only so common ingorant shareholder buyers-fools would buy and buy shares from big institutional holders which are currently fixing their profits — as they always do with share price spike before official quarter results.
Once official quarter results will be published (and “disappointing”), share price will drop significantly, so bigger institutional shareholders could buy the stock for low price and keep it until the near of the following quarter to repeat this scheme.
There is no way iPhone could sell these the crazy 32-38 million units when newest model was not even available for sale to the most of mankind during this quarter — “analysts” know that but still like to hype up expectations for the money.
You may be proved correct, but I don’t see 32-38 million units as being unrealistic. Verizon Already announced 4.2 million sales, AT&T will most likely sell the most in the region of 5.8 million and the other smaller US providers will account for around 2 million. That’s 12 million units in the US which makes up around a third of global iphone sales. So my guess would be around the 36 million mark,I wouldn’t be surprised if sales hit 38 million.
That would be correct if, contrary to what happen, new iPhone would be available for sale to all of mankind, not lesser part of it.
Most of people in the world could not buy iPhone 4S even if they wanted. So except for USA and few other major markets, sales in other regions mostly track 2011Q3 stamp.
So overall iPhone sales could be 25 million (up to 30 million if manufacturing and market could bear it).
If this were so commonly known, why wouldn’t regular shareholders piggyback on this strategy. Sell their shares to “fools”, wait for earnings to disappoint and then buy low?
Apple’s official results have disappointed only once the last 5 years or so, and even then, it was only a minor disappointment. So, your theory doesn’t hold up to the slightest scrutiny. Apple sells off after earnings due to so-called “weak guidance”, not to actual results.w
Everyone knows that Apple’s weak guidance is usually few billion worth underestimated, hence this is not factor at all. So your theory why Apple stock fall does not hold up to the slightest scrutiny.
I described the analysts’/market strategy for the last half of the year. Analysts prognosed 22 million iPhones for 2011Q3, and actual result was 17 million. They perfectly knew that Apple delaying new phone for four months would do significant impact on sales. Yet the intentionally continued to hype up the stock price for the reason I described.
Before that, their strategy for many years was underestimation (“Bearish” game). If played right, it also profitable to their clients, though in reverse way. The fools would keep the stock price quite moderately priced so institutional investors, analyst’s clients, would be able to buy stock cheap and sell them only when Apple’s stock price would raise some time after official results (in Bearish play pre-official results stock price pike and the following drop is minimal, but in few weeks Apple’s stock really grow).
So my theory is very well sound. Analysts manipulate stock prices either in Bullish or Bearish modes so small investors/buyers would be manipulating either to raise stock price or to keep it low, depending on the type of game. In both cases big institutional investors win, because they know what and why their hired analysts do in terms of
manipulationinformation their are giving to public.Could it be that MDN is in cahoots with the wall street thieves that manipulate AAPL prices by publishing those buy and target recommendations? This activity depends on distributing misleading information to the masses. Don’t believe denials, just make your own interpretation of these actions. All we need to know are Apples competitive actions and the stock trends to set our own targets and valuations. It should be obvious that their are few experts in the “analyst” world.
As much as I hate the analysts also I am glad we get to see what info they are disseminating. It is the only way a small investor gets to anticipate what the large investors are planning. We can’t change Wall, Street shenanigans, but we can see what they are doing and maybe make a profit making the correct moves based on what they are doing for the large investors. Not a perfect situation, but better than just being clueless.
One can almost feel the excitement being generated by Apple stock due to a possible “blowout” in iPhones sales in the exact same way the shares are moving with Neeham’s $540 share price target estimates. How much is Apple up today? A blistering .40% on this stunning news. Watch Apple’s share price upon earnings react in the same manner. I can almost see the collective yawn from Wall Street as investors say they can’t see any purpose of buying Apple at such a high price. They’d much rather buy Netflix because it’s heading for the moon, again.
By the time this hype runs another couple of weeks, everyone will be pumped so high, that no matter what Apple achieves in reality it will be a disappointment to Wall Street if they miss sales numbers for even one product. There will be no accolades for Apple doing insanely great while the rest of the tech gadget market pretty much sucked for the holidays.