Apple yesterday after market close announced financial results for its fiscal 2020 first quarter ended December 28, 2019. The company posted quarterly revenue of $91.8 billion, an increase of 9 percent from the year-ago quarter and an all-time record, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $4.99, up 19 percent, also an all-time record. International sales accounted for 61 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who rates AAPL an outperform with a $400 price target, write in a note to clients that Apple’s results were a “blow out print” that will “put more high octane fuel in the bull thesis,” as iPhone 11/Pro/Pro Max strength continues worldwide, with China as the “clear star of the show.”
Apple shares rose 2.24% in pre-market trading and are poised to open at a record high.
Kit Rees and Joe Easton for Bloomberg News:
Apple’s first-quarter results spurred optimism among analysts that demand for the tech giant’s iPhones will endure, especially as the company is said to be preparing to launch a new low-cost model and a 5G-enabled device later this year.
Analysts were particularly positive on growth in China, as well as the outlook for the second quarter… The shares rose 2.2% in the U.S. pre-market and are poised to open at a record high.
MacDailyNews Take: Onward and upward, Cupertino soldiers! Since Apple’s earnings release, RBC and Cohen have raised their AAPL price targets to $358 from $330 and to $370 from $350, respectively.
Like Gene Munster, I’d like to see AAPL valued like MSFT and/or FB.
I don’t think that will ever happen. Facebook is able to turn social media nothingness into gold and Microsoft has a cloud business that Wall Street firmly believes has unlimited growth. Apple has nothing like those other companies. Apple doesn’t believe in invading privacy and hardware is very expensive. Apple wouldn’t become like Facebook, but Apple certainly could have acquired a cloud business and grabbed some of that low-hanging cloud fruit as all the other tech companies did. I guess it’s too late now for Apple to get into cloud computing, but Apple could probably have designed some awesome ARM servers for cloud data centers.
Cloud services is not the golden child you make it to be. Look at the P/E contraction AMZN has faced in the last few quarters. Cloud has never been a strength of Apple. Why go in to a business you are not good at? Apple should stick to what they do well, create insanely great consumer products.
People seem to overlook and underestimate Apple’s Wearables division. The Wearables division didn’t even exist 5 years ago, but it already accounted for $10B of Q4 revenues. For context, all of Facebook’s 2019 Q3 revenue was only $17.65B.
I forgot to mention that Wearables “only” pulled in $10B because AirPots were supply contained….
Jun Zhang finally got his Apple-bearish butt kicked out of Rosenblatt Securities. Hooray! He finally had to take responsibility for deliberately screwing his clients for over a year. I think he’d be better suited at some non-investment type of job which won’t cost other people money when he lacks good judgment.
Next on the list… Rod Hall from Goldman Sachs.
His departure was announced as; “Zune Tang (aka Jun Zhang) flushed from Rosenblatt Securities.” Zune’s next stop is to the analyst realignment camp to relearn deduction basics and essentials.