“The Wall Street analysts who get paid to cover Apple (AAPL) got some things right,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“Several predicted Apple’s total revenue for the second fiscal quarter of 2011 within a few hundred million dollars. And their tendency to underestimate Apple’s unit sales served them well in the iPad category,” P.E.D. reports. “But when it came to the number that matters most — the bottom line: earnings per share — it was the amateurs, once again, who nailed it and the pros who blew it.”
P.E.D. reports, “In our ranking of the best and worst analysts for Q2 2011, which lists them by how accurately they predicted Apple’s revenue and EPS, the amateurs took 13 of the top 15 spots. The bottom 32 spots were all held by professionals working for banks and brokerage houses. Taken as a whole, the numbers they sent their paying clients were off by a margin (11%) more than four times as big as those generated by the guys who do it for free (2.5%).”
Read more in the full article, including a full analysts’ report card, here.
I missed EPS by $.02. Just goes to show you that anyone who follows Apple even semi-religiously can crush the people who are supposed to know what they’re doing.
http://themacadvocate.com/2011/04/20/tmas-predictions-for-apples-2q-financials-the-verdict/
The best quote from the article:
JMP’s Alex Gauna, who made a name for himself last month by downgrading Apple in the middle of the company’s best non-holiday quarter ever. He fell off our charts because he never supplied the unit sales numbers we requested, but his revenue estimate $22 billion would have been the second worst, and his $5.1 EPS estimate not much better.
Turd.
Anal-yst – skilled at taking the watch off your wrist to tell you the time.
…and then keeping the watch.
Note that Gene Munster, he of the perpetual “Apple’s building TVs!” fame, was off by 11.92%.
Yeah, I think I’ll pass on his produce predictions.
In 2009, he said that’d happen in 2011. In February, he said 2012 at the earliest.
If you don’t count his initial gaffe, that gives him the rest of time to be right about an Apple-branded TV.
As a Canadian, I should be saddened by this but, it only makes sense to go with what will do the job best. If RIM could do better, why can’t they prove it by putting out a better product instead of that piece of sh**t they just started pounding out to the public. Go Apple! Push those bastiges hard.
Apologies. Previous comment was to go to the Ottawa Hospital article.
On the whole, “professional” analysts are playing with your money because they don’t have enough skill to generate wealth using their own money. Many of them aren’t worth free, much less a fee.
Bottom line…. Professional analysts are very inept on figuring out or estimating Apple’s EPS. Don’t pay or follow analysts because again and again they are way way off reality.
Someone please tell analysts the deal is to estimate close to actual EPS not away. Expect no warranties from analysts whatsoever.
Nice to see at least SOMEONE is analyzing the MYSTERIOUS Wall Street analysts…