“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.]