“NPD reported that Mac sales went from a year-over-year increase in February of 43 percent to a year-over-year increase of only 7 percent in March,” Goldman reports. “And while Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster still believes Apple can hit his unit expectations of 2.8 million to 2.9 million Macs sold during the quarter, he had anticipated growth around 20 percent in March, which would have translated into a Mac sales number of over 3 million units.”
“In other words, even before Apple reports its earnings, NPD says the company will likely miss the rather optimistic whisper numbers floating around the Street. Apple shares are getting hit hard because of this. Munster says desktop sales dropped 5 percent year-over-year in March while laptops increased 14 percent,” Goldman reports.
Goldman reports, “NPD says overall, Mac sales increased 25 percent year-over-year for Apple’s March quarter. Consensus was up about 22 percent. But weakness in the month of March is likely what’s causing today’s sell-off. It’s a clear case of good news simply not being good enough.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What, you want Wall Street to react logically to third-party estimates about one-month of Mac sales? Don’t be silly. That said, being off 0.65%, as AAPL is right now, is not much of a sell-off, now is it? Perhaps logic actually has somehow prevailed on Wall Street today.
Another potential (and more sensible) reason for the “sell-off” might be Gizmodo’s “4G iPhone” and its potential to freeze the iPhone market until June.
Always love to hear how these “market analysts” try to deflect attention from the stock price manipulation tactics of the big institutional traders with their inane causal speculation. It’s time to “just say no” to CNBC, Fox Business News, Bloomberg TV, etc. when they waste so much air time on this blather.
Just an excuse for some profit taking after fast recent gains.
300 by xmas
Case of the blind leading the ignorant.
Could it be that sales are off because the biggest selling Mac line was due for a refresh and almost everyone new it?
AAPL is overpriced. That’s why. Their iPod line is aging, their computers never saw the growth that was promised (over the past decade they’ve grown like 2% in the US? Basically 0% worldwide?), and their iPhone line is hitting some stiff competition from Google and their partners.
Apple is a great company, and enormously popular, but you shouldn’t expect their stock to climb 5000% this decade like it did last decade.
Here is a list of tech companies still more profitable than Apple:
MS, IBM, ATT, HP, Google.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/performers/companies/profits/
Agree, its idiot or criminal groups that just do not understand.
But thats better for us. It gives us buying options. For people to sell now, it is just money for those pushing the stock around.
Hey, Apple is up 50….. Microsoft is up …….1.
Just a thought,
en
How many times do these ass clowns need to be wrong before people stop listening to them?
It’s just profit taking. Apple has run really hard and now that most of the current news is out folks will bank some profits and then buy back in in time for the iPhone 4G hype.
“It’s a clear case of good news simply not being good enough.”
Yeah right. AAPL was off 33¢ from Friday’s close. Looks like when AAPL got cheap enough (down $5.63) those with cash didn’t believe the reports. I wonder who that might have been?
“Apple shares are getting hit hard because of this”…. what is this guy smoking? What a bunch of crap.
More stock price manipulation, so the big money can get in before what they actually expect will be the quarterly report’s better than “good enough” news. They could NOT drive it down too far or for too long, because it closed back over $247, just one tenth of one percent below the previous close. I hope they got back in at $242; NOT – I hope they missed it and smaller investors took advantage of the dip to get in with more shares.
It’s clear Apple has good earnings news. They delayed iPad’s launch by a few days from “late March” to “early April,” so that the revenue from the initial weekend iPad sales (including the shipped pre-orders), would count for the June quarter, not the one that ends March. Therefore, revenue and profit were already beating expectations for the March quarter without adding in the initial iPad surge, which they wanted to apply to the June quarter. That’s what I think; in this case, these “analysts” are being wrong intentionally.
Apple is under priced, not over price. Google is over priced. Apple has had record earnings since before the recession. And is still getting stronger. As others have said, the blind leading the ignorant!
@DallasM: Save up your allowance and buy a clue.
@Zeke
Please don’t feed the trolls.
This article is just stupid, stupid stupid stupid…how many times do I have to say stupid!
C’mon Dallasm….give me a clue….oh wait!
@ DallasM;
[url=”http://www.financialadvisory.com/article/13-03-2010/756/wal-mart-(nyse-wmt)-overtaken-by-apple-(nasdaq-aapl)-as-third-largest-american-company/
“]Third largest American company[/url]
gordianHairball += marketSpeculation;
Apple will report the facts tomorrow.
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nice end of day rebound
Here’s an idea, stop watching the f-ing stock every 5 minutes. Show us a trend line over a year or a quarter, a month, hell I’ll take a week trend over the every 5 minute stock-watching-pot-isnt-boiling routine they are doing now.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
@Dallasm
First off AAPL isn’t responding TODAY for being overpriced. You cannot pinpoint any ONE thing and say that’s what caused them to react today they way they did.
Secondly, uh, the stock was only down .33
Thirdly of those companies you mentioned they aren’t that much cheaper on a P/E ratio than Apple and in fact Google is more expensive than Apple.
And lastly and probably most importantly…
Investors buy stock on future speculation. MS, HP ATT are old tired companies that have mature product lines. Apple behaves like a growth stock and appears to be heading for more years of growth ahead. That they have a small market share in computers is actually a positive, in that every little percentage of market they take is worth billions to their bottom line. Companies like MS are already at or near their max market share and have fewer opportunities for growth. Their stock chart looks like the heart monitor of a dead man.
People love AAPL because they see a winner for years to come. All you have to do is look at their revenue and earnings YOY for the past few years to realize this. So if their P/E is a little higher, that’s why.
@Me In LA
I loves me some Apple but lets not get carried away. Apple is NOT the third LARGEST American company. They have the third largest MARKET CAP, and that a huge difference.
There could be some truth to Apple not hitting numbers for the quarter. Desktop sales SHOULD be down. They haven’t done a significant desktop model upgrade in quite a while (seems like forever, for the Mac Pro). Lots of people are holding off desktop purchases (I’m one, in fact) until new models appear. And I personally have no doubt that Apple has been shifting a lot of its attention toward the iPad and iPhone development. But a sell-off? Meh. Doesn’t look too scary yet.
@ Macromancer,
Sure. I just copied that over from a page I had bookmarked.
Apple always get slammed by the haters here, so I put it up (sort of!)
@Macromancer
“Apple is not the third largest American company.”
Actually, they are, valued as one values any equity — a house, a car, or a fleet of airplanes: by what it currently sells for.
Revenue, inventory, plant and equipment, cash on hand, profit: these are what look at to judge value for themselves, but until I offer someone money for the company or some fraction of it, and he takes it, it’s purely academic.
One day’s move does not usually mean much.
Those who seek the answer whether stock markets are efficient need to include all the fear, doubts, greed, ignorance, hope, short sellers, day traders, hedge traders, pumpers, dumpers, haters, along with actual information in their equations.
Personally, I buy whoever is gaining relevance and sell those losing it. I bought AAPL several years ago and they have not stopped gaining relevance yet. Despite having increased by a factor of 31 for me, there is obviously considerable upside remaining as long as management follows its present vision. With AAPL part of your bet is on products no-one has even seen yet. You’re buying a fountain of transcendent thinking. One month’s sales guesstimate or one day’s SP movement is not very significant.