“With strong Macintosh sales that drove a 36%-growth in earnings from a year ago, Apple Inc.’s second-quarter report had enough good news to make other companies green with envy in a slowing economy,” Rex Crum reports for MarketWatch.
“Yet the consumer electronics icon still managed to issue a profit forecast that was below estimates,” Crum reports.
“In a conference call to discuss the results after Wednesday’s closing bell, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said the company expects to earn $1 a share for the current quarter – coming in below the $1.09 expected by Wall Street analysts, according to estimates from FactSet Research. Sales for the quarter were projected to come in at $7.2 billion, in line with prior estimates,” Crum reports.
“‘They are being extra conservative,’ said Gene Munster, an analyst who covers Apple at Piper Jaffray. ‘They should have guided higher than $1 a share for the revenue they are projecting,'” Crum reports. “Apple has a long track record of giving quarterly earnings and sales forecasts that undercut Wall Street analysts’ estimates – and then delivering results that put the prior forecasts to shame. The company likes to say it’s just being conservative, though others believe Apple intentionally aims low in its forecast to set up for an easy beat in the quarter.”
More in the full article here.