Apple to Announce Q1 2014 Earnings on January 27

Being able to sustain profits at or near record levels is a major achievement in tech. Staying as one of the two most profitable American companies is no small feat.

Sustaining profits isn't an achievement. The name of the game is growth.

Which is reflected in the current stock price. Apple hasn't revised its guidance so odds are that it will fall somewhere in the range. Analysts will likely look more toward their projection for the following quarter.

Investors will consider guidance, but flat earnings will likely fail to impress. The point being, calling every quarter a "record" is misleading, especially if only revenues are being considered and earnings are in fact flat.

Sort of. Depends on the nature of the added expenditures. If they're reducible sunk costs, for instance, then it shows growth. If they're perpetual, I agree, no growth, though it does help the broader economy.

One time expenses can be broken out in financial reports, but I haven't seen in the past where this has made a huge difference in Apple's financials.

That's not actually true. Apple announced that they will be deferring an additional 900 million in revenue this quarter as a result of making OS X and some other software free with new devices. So if EPS is flat, that would still indicate significant growth.

Well, it certainly appears to be true that the article is taking only revenues into account, since it quotes only those estimates along with gross margins. I also don't see investors being too impressed with differed revenues. I don't know how they book revenue from giving away software at any point in the future.

In any case, I think we all know why AAPL is stuck in low gear. It's because they are no longer posting 20-30% YoY earnings growth. In reality they are posting little to none. Kind of puts the concept of a "record quarter" into proper perspective.

Holy Cow! My flux capacitor is working, I just got back from the future. TC presented these numbers, and the share was up almost 3.8% in after-market.

55m iphones
24m ipads
5,5m macs
eps 14,74
rev 59b


If this post shows before January 27, my time machine is a GOGO.

If the company meets even the low end of that guidance, it will count as the strongest quarter for Apple in history.

Every quarter is tipped as the strongest quarter ever though.

Exactly, because of a lack of care about definitions of financial terms. They seem to be referring to revenues, but revenues matter far less than earnings. The forecast of about $13.80 EPS is about the same as last year, so if this proves to be the case, then it's a no-growth year for Apple.

Yes and no. At some point maintaining above-market levels of growth becomes improbable, if not impossible. Growing at 20% is a lot easier if you are a niche player (as Apple was from 1997-2001) than when you are one of the dominant players (as Apple has been since at least 2010). Even if Steve Jobs were still alive and running Apple the company would be facing stiff competition. After all, it was under his watch that Samsung became a big supplier, and that Google had their CEO on their board while developing a rival operating system.

If so, then you've been through much longer periods of time between game-changing product releases. For instance, the iPod was released in October 2001. The first iPhone wasn't released for 5.5 years in June 2007. The iPad came 2.75 years later in March 2010, but remember it was actually in development before the iPhone. I doubt even if Steve Jobs had lived that we'd have seen another game changer by now. I don't see the TV as a game changer. First of all, it's a much smaller market than the mobile phone market. Second, TVs aren't the kind of thing that people buy every year or two (even in the analog days phone upgrades were common). It's the same with watches. Technology, although it changes rapidly, moves in fits and starts. We had an explosion of new products, from Apple and others, in the early 2000s. Now we are in a period of enhancement rather than introduction of radical new products. Seriously, how much changed between Apple in 1997 and Apple in October 2001? Sure, Apple released some improvements to the Mac line, but nothing was really "revolutionary." Even the original iPod had a ho-hum reception (it was a pricey, Mac-only accessory) for the first year or so.

At this point we aren't even talking about "above market" growth, we are talking essentially no growth, or actually for several recent quarters, negative growth. So I can't agree with your "yes or no" appraisal. Yes, the game is growth. Full stop. I didn't make any reference to Steve Jobs, so I am not as you might imagine one of those people who blames Tim Cook. The game has become steadily more difficult for Apple but they have won at it by pulling rabbits out of their magic hat, one after another. This is what they do, this is what people expect them to do. Regularly.

You can talk about other product intervals, but these are essentially meaningless comparisons. When facing competition of the kind they are now in their key markets they simply have to move faster, or they will not only find that their earnings are not growing, but that consumers will look elsewhere for visionary products.

What happened at Apple between 1997 and 2001 is, as we know now, they became committed to making the next big thing, and the next big thing after that, and the next big thing after that. I don't believe that these big things are at an end, or should even be at a pause, and despite keeping up with the rumors as a matter of sport, I know that most of them miss the real events by a mile. At the same time, I am not an apologist for Apple. If it looks like their feet are dragging, I will say so -- as both fan of the company for 30+ years, and an investor for more than half that time. I am neither because I think they make nice, evolutionary products. I expect them to continue to make the totally unexpected, completely real. This is the company and culture that Steve Jobs built, and I expect Apple to be that company for years to come.

Others are entitled to lower expectations. I just don't understand them.

Patient?! LOL. It's been less than four years since the iPad. I guess for a speculator such as yourself that's a long time indeed. For us investors, it's nothing. We waited four years between the iMac and the iPod and 6 years between the iPod and the iPhone (not to mention 17 years between the original Mac OS and OS X). We've been reward well for our patience. As for the speculators, some of them win, some of them lose. I don't shed a tear for any of them.

Four years is an eternity in consumer products, especially in technology, and that 17 year wait you speak of so cavalierly nearly killed the company, so that analogy is about as scary as they come. Apple has real, serious competition in the two markets they most recently pioneered, and that is why we've seen this flatlining of the company's earnings growth. If I didn't think that more was coming and fairly soon I'd be a former investor, but I think it's more than clear that they have to move more quickly than they have over the last few years, lest this become a trend.

Even if Apple has NO growth it will be better than the DECLINE Samsung just reported.

Apple is killing right now. Increasing sales. Share. And margins.