“In the past three months, Apple set new sales and profit records for the quarter and wrapped up a fiscal year in which it blew past the $100 billion mark,” David Goldman reports for CNNMoney. “It sold an all-time record number of Macs and iPads.”
Goldman reports, “It sounds strange, but this is what a bad quarter for Apple looks like.”
“Despite those records, Apple’s revenue and earnings this quarter fell far short of Wall Street’s forecasts,” Goldman reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Wall Street’s been undershooting for seven years now. Now they’ve finally overshot. Either way, they still can’t get it right. The two greatest jobs in the world: Weather forecaster and Wall Street analyst. No accountability and you just keep getting paid.
“Those numbers disappointed investors expecting more, and shares of Apple fell 7% after hours,” Goldman reports. “At the market’s close Tuesday, the stock had finished regular trading at an all-time high of $422.24.”
“The Cupertino, Calif.-based company said its net income for the quarter rose to $6.6 billion, or $7.05 per share, up 54% from a year earlier,” Goldman reports. “Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast earnings of $7.39 per share. Apple’s sales rose 39% to $28.3 billion, but badly missed analysts’ estimates of $29.7 billion. The company’s sales for its full fiscal year, which ended Sept. 24, were $108.2 billion — a giant leap ahead of the $65.2 billion Apple raked in last year, but short of the $109.5 billion Wall Street forecast.”
MacDailyNews Note: On July 19, 2011, Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, gave Q411 guidance of “revenue of about $25 billion” and “diluted earnings per share of about $5.50.”
Goldman reports, “Apple also finished the quarter with an ungodly $81.6 billion in cash, which the company said it intends to hang onto for possible acquisitions or unexpected bumps in the road.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As of 6:23PM EDT, AAPL shares are off $27.04 (-6.40%) to $395.20 in after-hours trading. Anyone praying that the panic deepens or at least lasts until tomorrow’s open? Ready to back up the truck to fill it with discount AAPL shares?
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