“Apple’s (AAPL) sweet earnings report left a bad taste in the mouths of some analysts and investors, sending the company’s shares lower on Thursday,” Troy Wolverton reports for TheStreet.com. “Apple’s shares were recently off $3.39, or 8.3%, to $37.65. On Wednesday afternoon, the computer and electronics maker topped Wall Street’s earnings estimates by 10 cents a share and offered better-than-expected guidance for its current quarter.”
“Despite the blowout numbers, some analysts still found room to quibble. On a conference call after the earnings release Wednesday, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer warned that the company’s revenue growth — which hit a 70% year-over-year rate in the quarter — will likely slow to closer to 15%,” Wolverton reports. “Oppenheimer didn’t predict how soon Apple’s revenue growth will reach that rate, but in a report issued Thursday, American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu warns that the slowdown could happen as soon as the company’s next fiscal year. That possibility is in stark contrast with investors’ expectations, Wu says.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So did analysts think Apple was going to post enormous revenue growth increases forever? And what company does? And do they really expect Apple to come out with an iPod-like phenomenon every year? It seems to us that many are missing the real stories here: Mac sales are on the increase and are growing much faster than the PC industry as a whole and debt-free Apple now has over $7 billion in the bank or almost 25% of the company’s current market value.
That said, we really, really, really wouldn’t mind seeing AAPL bottom out at around $35. 
My stop sell order bailed me out at $38.20. My limit buy order will trigger at $35.00. I’m with MDN, slide, baby, slide!
Well, I’m into AAPL for at least a medium term investment, but it still fills me drawers with hot brown suds to watch hundreds of my hard earned dollars evaporate every 15 minutes this morning. Such shady business the stock market is….it’s all gambling against other stockholders, and very little to do with the actual companies involved. Hopefully tomorrow will be a much more postive day!
Bunch of idiots in the stock market. Apple is the only personal computer company doing great and there penalizing them for having such a great record breaking quarter like they lost money or something. I really don’t know what they were expecting but from what I see it was all great news and more to come.
I can imagine that once Tiger is released the stock will peak again. The number of OS upgrades they plan to sell is sure to reign in a hefty sum of profit for the quarter. I expect Apple to ride the profit wave of Tiger followed by brisk holiday sales to get them to next year on a chariot made of gold. By this time next year, there will be a whole slew of new hardware and possibly some iLife/iWork updates.
Unfortunately, I don’t own any stock in AAPL. I prefer my 401(k) to be well diversified among stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.
Unless PowerMac & iMac sales pick up and there is proof that minimac and shuttle are not killing sales of higher revenue computers and ipods…Apple will not please the analysts.
The world wants inexpensive, apple is giving them inexpensive. It Takes lots more sales to make up the revenue of the low priced products.
Some of these people need to be punched in the face. I want names so I can go and punch their lights out! Anyone want to join in?
Still, not as bad as the crash of 2001. Yet.
Wall Street had already factored the increased revenue into the price, so naturally no bump from what was reported. Future not expected to be as stellar (per Apple CFO), so profit takers took their money and ran. Not a reflection that Wall Street thinks that Apple is a bad company, just that the stock price isn’t undervalued any more.
Cool. The kids and I can eat grits for a week and we’ll put our food bill into AAPL shares when they hit $35. They we’ll eat lobster a week after that when its $45!
There’s an “analist’s market” & there’s also an “amazon (top sellers) market”. I prefer the latter
I held AAPL for 2 years until today. A stop loss order turned out to be a very good idea. I think this is a necessary correction in people’s thinking about APPL. Most of the analysts and many investors hung their hats solely on iPod sales and that speculation was driving the huge price fluctuations we’ve seen. If they’ve all bailed out and taken their speculation with them, then what is left is solid value, something which I’ll put my money back into at about $35. Repeat after me…”It’s the OX [X] stupid!” Long term it will be CPUs and software that will be AAPL’s bread and butter, not iPods.
Fall Apple, fall! I want the stock to fall back to $20 per share so I can invest this time. It would be like getting a second chance! Please do this before Tiger comes out.
Amazing!!! Robert Maltbie writes in Forbes that it’s time to short AAPL! This comes at 1:29 pm today, after the price has dropped between 10% and 15% in the last 24 hours. Is this guy clairvoyant or what? He’s amazing at precidting the future after it’s already happened, like most analysts.
zeke: “Long term it will be CPUs and software that will be AAPL’s bread and butter, not iPods.”
But that is not the impression that Apple is giving out. They seemed possessed with the iPod and neglecting the computers.
Sales of Powermacs are dropping year after year. No one knows what iMac sales are since Apple hides that in with the minimac sales. So one must assume bad news there. If iMac sales were booming along with miniMac apple would have listed them separately instead of playing accounting tricks to disguise the numbers.
The conversation at Apple had to go like this:
“Whew! iMac sales are dropping bad, we can´t report this. minimac sales are doing real good. Let´s lump the two together (along with the so-so eMac) so we can hide the poor iMac sales.”
Problem with Apple is it gets back to the same thing – their computers are too expensive for most computer buyers. It will be real scary for Apple if the minimac becomes their largest seller. (And all those PC owners using cheap Dell $159 17″ CRT monitors, because Apple doesn´t make one…)
Read the analysts’ reaction to Apple’s stock price drop on 9/29/2000. Especially the part related to Apple needing to be more like Gateway in order to succeed. LOL Goes to show what these morons knew then and now (i.e. nothing)….
http://money.cnn.com/2000/09/29/technology/apple/
“Still, not as bad as the crash of 2001. Yet.”
The “crash” was actually in September 2000. And AAPL lost 51% of it’s value in one single day, so what’s happening today is nothing more than a blip on the radar screen compared to that day.
“If iMac sales were booming along with miniMac apple would have listed them separately instead of playing accounting tricks to disguise the numbers.”
They aren’t playing any “accounting tricks” there. No PC manufacturer breaks down individual model sales numbers at all. Actually this is the final quarter that Apple is going to do it too since none of their competitors do it either. The bottom line is that they sold 1.07 million Macs (up 43% from the year ago quarter) in a historically slow quarter for all computer manufacturers. That’s good news no matter how you try to spin it…
My take on the whole thing is the analysts kept cautioning leading into the call with regards to is Apple a one trick pony just the iPod when will they show any gains in hardware sales.
Apple shows a distinct connection between increased PC sales and the iPod while maintianing a strong hold in the online music market.
After that analyst complain that the iPod biz isn’t good enough.
Its like the keystone cops.
The real store is Apple has established that they are a well rounded company with a diverse revenue stream. Every PC sale is huge because it tethers the user to the plateform and Apple software upgrades and in theory hardware upgrades. That is going to be ther real story.
This quarter will be big because I know of many people that have been sitting on thier hands waiting for Tiger and the upgrade cycle to hit to buy.
This is hilarious:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/04/14/europe.stocks.reut/index.html
Apple, cyclicals lead Europe lower
“U.S. shares were down as Apple’s weak revenue outlook raised concerns about the outlook for corporate profits in general, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling 42.30 points, or 0.4 percent, to 10,362.19 points.”
There are two ways of looking at this. I would dispute the characterization of Apple’s revenue outlook being “weak”. On the other hand, it is amazing to see how influential Apple is becoming in the world financial markets.
A reliable Apple retail source tells me CPU sales break down about like this at one store:
iMac/MacMini 40%
Notebooks 40%
PowerMacs 20%
The trend is away from towers and toward laptops. Also, it appears to be the OS, not price that is primarily driving switchers.
I agree Zeke, towers are too espensive and only useful for those that want raw power and flexibility in adding drives etc.
I want to see Dell and Msft stock to take a dive when they report.
If they can, Apple should move their quarter back a week or two. Maybe then expectations will be reasonable once everyone sees how the competitors are faring.
Fact is Apple posted the best earnings ever in what is typically the slowest quarter of the year. What is going to happen in the next three quarters?
zeke: “Long term it will be CPUs and software that will be AAPL’s bread and butter, not iPods.”
gackle: “But that is not the impression that Apple is giving out. They seemed possessed with the iPod and neglecting the computers.”
No, it’s actually the analysts who are obsessed with iPod sales. They don’t understand Apple beyond this short term phenomenon. So they tout Apple to uninformed investors on that basis and the investors speculate, driving the price through the roof. Then at the first sign of reality they all run for cover. It’s actually a distraction and a PITA that I could do without. I’d like to park my money in AAPL for a few years and not have to monitor it daily. But instead I have to keep tabs on what the herd is doing and whether it’s about to stampede in one direction or the other.
With idiots like this, who needs to be smart to be a financial analyst?
i.e., todays article in Forbes: PortalPlayer ‘Well Positioned’ Despite IPod Weakness
The best from the article: “… the company remains “well positioned” this year despite disappointing iPod sales recently reported by Apple Computer”
Who in their right mind would call last quarter’s iPod sales disappointing? Forbes didn’t predict anything higher, so there’s something behind this statement other than someone’s double-digit IQ.
apple has raised expectations very high with its recent successes. i think it has raised the bar so high that some people DO expect it to continually pull a rabbit out of its hat. that’s unfortunate because it’s obviously unrealistic. it’ll be interesting to see how apple responds to this and what the “smarter” analysts say about it.
Give them analysts a cigarette and a blindfold.
To put it all into perspective, the 1.07 million Macs sold this past quarter was the highest sales volume Apple has had in 4 1/2 years. There is a halo effect working here for sure.