“Apple recently announced that it plans to report its financial results for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2017 on Nov. 2,” Ashraf Eassa writes for The Motley Fool. “This, as some have pointed out, is late compared to when Apple has reported fourth-quarter results in previous fiscal years. During fiscal year 2016, Apple reported its fourth-quarter results on Oct. 25. In the year prior to that, it reported fourth-quarter results on Oct. 27. And the year before that, the company reported its results on Oct. 20.”
“A report on Nov. 2 isn’t much later than it was, say, last year — it’s just six days’, or less than a week’s, difference,” Eassa writes. “But I do think that the slightly later-than-usual fourth-quarter earnings announcement is deliberate. ”
“For the company to provide investors with a useful financial forecast for the first quarter of fiscal-year 2018, it really needs to have some insight into the customer interest in iPhone X, the degree to which iPhone X shipments will cannibalize iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus shipments, and more,” Eassa writes. “By putting off the fourth-quarter report — and, by extension, the publication of a financial forecast for the following quarter — to Nov. 2, Apple should have a reasonable amount of data with which to furnish a forecast.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As is usual with earnings, for Wall Street, at least, it’s all about the guidance.
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Apple to release Q417 earnings, webcast live conference call on November 2nd – October 3, 2017