“Apple (AAPL) is scheduled to report its third fiscal quarter earnings next week, and despite the $11 billion difference between the most conservative professional revenue estimate and the most bullish independent’s, the gap between the two groups is not as wide as its been in recent quarters,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune. “That’s probably a good thing, for both groups.”
“After getting clobbered quarter after quarter for nearly four years by a bunch of bloggers and other amateur analysts, the professionals seem to be giving their clients more realistic numbers,” P.E.D. reports. “And having badly misjudged two of the last three quarters, the more bullish independents have, for the most part, started to come back to earth.”
P.E.D. reports, “Still, when we polled our panel of 66 Apple analysts — 34 independents and 32 professionals — we saw a sharp divide between the two groups, and significant differences in their consensus estimates. On average, the pros are looking for Apple to report earnings per share of $10.32 on sales of $37.3 billion. The independents are expecting earnings of $12.28 on sales of $41.43. That’s a gap of $4.1 billion (11%) on revenue and $1.96 (nearly 19%) on EPS.”
Check out all of the analysts’ estimates in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
It seems rather stupid to have that many analysts picking apart Apple stock and yet they still can’t tell investors what direction Apple shares are headed on earnings. Those numbers are all over the place from low to high. Useless information. I think the independent analysts should be doing something more useful with their spare time.
Google didn’t have nearly the media fanfare before earnings that Apple has. No need for a bazillion analysts putting the company under a microscope. No cause for pre-earnings agitation for shareholders. Google handily beat their numbers, the share price got a healthy pop, end of happy story for Google shareholders.
Apple seriously needs to do something about useless media pre-earnings coverage. Too many clueless analysts trying to write their own Apple story based on misinformation.
I’d really like to know exactly how Apple can “do something” about what analysts write and speak about in the run-up to the earnings report. I agree that the entire analyst industry is clueless but perhaps they know better than I how to manipulate the market so they make money on the report. There’s probably no money to be made if they do the same with Google.
I think the SEC should be the outfit that reins in the way these idiots spew forth their collective nonsense and how their “analyses” harm publicly-traded firms and their stockholders’ stakes. It’s truly criminal what they do.
The goal of we independent analysts is to call the analysts on the carpet for their misleading information. We post our estimates before the analysts do. They copy us and adjust up right before earnings. The value of the work of the independents is worth tens of billions in market cap.
Apple Stock has been ” clobbered quarter after quarter” ? On what planet?
It’s not Apple stock, it’s the ‘pro’ ANALysts that get clobbered quarter after quarter.
Quote Gilda, “Nevermind!”
LOL
I see the hedge funds are up to their normal dump for profit and buy ahead of the blowout quarterly statement.
And how do they do that?
Dumping and buying and the same time.
They dump stock when it’s price is high, thus forcing prices to fall (panic syndrome) then buy stock back at the lower price, making money in between the sell price and the buy back price.
It’s called manipulating the market