How will Apple answer Wall Street’s $85 billion question?

“Apple has just a few hours to answer Wall Street’s billion-dollar question — well, $85 billion to be exact,” Anita Balakrishnan writes for CNBC. “Apple on Thursday afternoon is set to report its financial results for the quarter ending in September and give Wall Street an idea of what to expect over the holiday season. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect Apple to forecast revenue of $84.9 billion between October and January.”

MacDailyNews Take: Well, okay, so not “exact.” In our world, $100 million still means something.

Other analyst estimates:

• Q4 adjusted EPS: $1.87 expected by a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate.
• Q4 revenue: $50.7 billion expected by Thomson Reuters.
• Q4 iPhone unit sales: 46 million expected by a FactSet consensus estimate.
• Q1 revenue forecast: $84.9 billion expected by Thomson Reuters.
• Q1 margin forecast: 38.6 percent expected by a StreetAccount estimate.

“In the past, Apple has debuted products in September and released them soon after. As a result, analysts get a hint of how new iPhones are selling by October or November, ahead of January’s big holiday-season numbers,” Balakrishnan writes. “But this year, Apple’s flagship product, the iPhone X, hasn’t even hit stores. That means a lot is riding on Apple’s forward guidance. Ancillary products, like HomePod, are also in the pipeline.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: As always, we’ll bring your the results as soon as they are available (simply check our home page right around 4:30pm EDT).

Apple’s conference call to discuss Q417 results is scheduled for Thursday, November 2, 2017, at 2pm PDT / 5pm EDT. We plan to cover the conference call with live notes as usual. That link will appear on our home page around 4:45pm EDT.

[UPDATE, 2:20om EDT: Fixed our math as is usually required.]

SEE ALSO:
Apple to release Q417 earnings, webcast live conference call on November 2nd – October 3, 2017