“While much of the sell side today has offered words of encouragement about Apple’s (AAPL) fiscal Q4 miss last night, the buy side is a bit more mixed,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
“David Rolfe of Wedgewood Partners tells me by phone this afternoon that as far as the miss last night, he’s inclined to agree with Andy Zacky of Bullish Cross, who today opines that Apple analysts should have realized there was a lot of ‘channel filling’ of the iPhone going on in fiscal Q2 and fiscal Q3 — sales to distribution in advance of actual end-user activations — which made those quarters look stronger than they actually were,” Ray reports. “Like the analysts, Rolfe confesses he had some ‘sloppy thinking’ about the iPhone that made him think it would be bigger last quarter than it was.”
Ray reports, “Still, Rolfe, who manages the RiverPark/Wedgewood Institutional fund (RWGIX), and whose firm holds roughly $90 million of Apple stock, its largest single weighting in stocks, is inclined to think the shares are holding up quite well, actually, and he’d still buy the stock today.”
More analysts’ views in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Joe Architect” for the heads up.]
At a P/E of 11, with 40% yoy growth, yes I’d think you would still buy the stock today. Considering the company’s pattern of just-in-time manufacturing and selling out every unit that becomes available, the channel filling comment seems un-meaningful.
“Analyst”: translation — Moron.
Apple sold around 6 million iPhones last quarter. They announced they already sold 7 million in the last two and half weeks. Also, the quarter is an additional week this year AND its the holiday season. Buy.
Apple does not report units “shipped” but rather units “sold”. These are units sold to the customer. Therefore no channel stuffing reporting (e.g., some vendors have reported hundreds of thousands of an item “shipped”, but these were shipped to distributors not the public. Virtually none had actually sold to the public. — THAT’s channel stuffing.)