“It has become, for the Street, an embarrassing quarterly tradition,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“The Apple (AAPL) independent analysts — a growing community of bloggers, private investors and assorted amateurs — file estimates that look, by Wall Street’s standards, outrageously optimistic,” P.E.D. reports. “But as the day of reckoning approaches — in this case, Tuesday Oct. 18, when Apple is scheduled to announce its fourth quarter earnings for fiscal 2011 — the estimates filed by the professional analysts inch closer to the bloggers’. Three months ago the Street’s consensus EPS for the quarter was $6.37. Today, according to Thomson Financial, it is $7.20.”
“But that’s still nearly 24% lower than $8.92, the consensus offered the bloggers,” P.E.D. reports. “Which group is right? Judging from the chart above, kindly prepared by reader Adam Bushman from data we’ve been collecting for the past six quarters, you should probably take your professional broker’s advice with a grain of salt. In every one of those quarters, the bloggers have clobbered the pros — often by a considerable margin.”
More, including all of the analysts’ estimates, pro in name and pro in performance alike, in the full article here.
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Apple to webcast Q411 earnings release conference call on October 18 – September 27, 2011