By SteveJack
It’s late Sunday morning on the East coast of the United States and, in a clear sign that I am among the deranged, the waiting is painful for Tuesday’s Apple Computer earnings report and financial results conference call plus Wednesday’s “One more thing” special event.
For those not in “The Cult,” those who haven’t had a drop of the Kool-Aid, this is just another Sunday morning. Maybe they’ll be going to church, taking a nap later, trying to clean malware off their Windows PCs, watching the baseball game or some football, seeing if John Daly can hold off Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh, or, ironically, listening to their iPods. They just don’t understand.
For “the rest of us,” this Sunday morning means that we have too long to wait for two days that promise to be as big as that magical few days that come every January when Apple earnings and Steve Jobs’ Macworld Expo keynote combine to form the perfect Apple storm.
This Tuesday, October 11, Apple will release their fourth quarter 2005 earnings report after the closing market bell. Shortly thereafter, at 5pm ET, Apple will webcast the audio of their Q4 05 quarterly earnings conference call to discuss financial results with analysts. The consensus of analysts surveyed by Thompson/First Call expect Apple (AAPL) to earn $0.36 per share on revenue of $3.68 billion. In the year ago quarter, Q4 04, Apple earned $0.14 per share on revenue of $2.35 billion and shipped 836,000 Macintosh units and 2,016,000 iPod units. In the last completed quarter, Q3 05, Apple earned $0.37 per share on revenue of $3.52 billion and shipped 1,182,000 Macintosh units and 6,155,000 iPod units.
Okay, the earnings announcement/conference call happens four times a year. It’s a pretty big deal just by itself. But, then on Wednesday, October 12, at 1:00 pm ET, Apple will hold their “One More Thing” special media event at the California Theater in San Jose, California. What the event will reveal has been subject to thousands of articles and theories already. Expect quite a few more in the upcoming days.
I’m not going to add to the conjecture here, but I will say that Apple must be very confident of a strong earnings report to have scheduled the special media event for the very next day. And only Apple can inspire such outright crazed anticipation in its customers.
People who aren’t “Macheads” just don’t understand this excruciating anticipation experience we’re all going through now and in the upcoming days (you’re probably one of them if you’re reading this). Just remember, you’re not alone. Only 52 hours and 45 minutes until for the earnings release, 53 hours and 15 minutes for the conference call, and 73 hours and 15 minutes for the special media event left to go! Are you feeling it, too?
SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, web designer, multimedia producer and a regular contributor to the MacDailyNews Opinion section.