“Merrill Lynch‘s equity strategist Dan Suzuki and his team today offer up the observation that a better-than-expected S&P 500 earnings season in Q4 was yet another Apple (AAPL) effect,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
“The grand total of average earnings per share, $24.56, was better than the $24.37 consensus estimate only because of Apple, which handily beat both sales and profit estimates back on January 24,” Ray reports. “‘Much of the beat was due to stronger-than-expected results from AAPL,’ writes Suzuki. ‘Excluding AAPL, S&P 500 earnings would have missed estimates by 1.4%.’ Q4 earnings growth of 13% would have been just 10% without Apple, moreover.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Behold the power of Apple!
So, Apple props up the PC industry sales growth numbers. Now AAPL is propping up the earnings numbers for the S&P 500. And where would the music industry be without Apple.
Egads.
I’m starting to suspect that Apple’s been eating 800lb gorillas .. for breakfast snacks!
-hh
Or uses the 800 lb gorillas as players on Apple’s chess board. It is fun to push around the big guys! This is Apple’s game and it uses Apple’s Rules now!