Philip Elmer-Dewitt has put together his list of analyst expectations ahead of Apple's quarterly earnings report this afternoon. The list includes estimates from 68 analysts: 34 "independent" and 34 "institutional" who work for large investment houses or research organizations.
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As usual, the independents are much more bullish than the institutional analysts. The independent consensus expects earnings per share (EPS) of $12.31 on revenue of $41.49 billion. The institutional consensus is EPS of $10.33 on $37.21 billion in revenue. This is a 12% difference on revenue and a 19% difference on EPS.
Apple will announce its earnings for the third fiscal quarter of 2012 (second calendar quarter of 2012) and host a conference call regarding the release this afternoon at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific. The earnings release itself typically comes in around 4:30 PM Eastern. MacRumors will have live coverage of the proceedings.
Last quarter the company earned $11.6 billion in profit on revenue of $39.2 billion. For the second fiscal quarter, Apple has issued guidance of $34 billion in revenue with profits of $8.68 per share. The company typically exceeds its guidance by a significant margin.
Top Rated Comments
$12.35 EPS on $40.1B revenue
LOL, ace (*cough cough*) ANAL-yst Huberty is lowballing this one, coming in at the bottom.
:p
The Mac numbers will be interesting, however. Will the Retina MacBook be enough to reverse the poor sales growth seen recently?
Huberty is very consistent in her ineptitude, so one can use her predictions, not as what Apple will do, but as what Apple will not do.
She definitely is not a star-rated analyst, although that never stops MacRumors/AppleInsider/other sites from quoting her. Like I said, her nonsensical reports generate pageviews.
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Apple generally announces new hardware products on Tuesdays, so it is unlikely that Apple will release these the day after an analyst conference call.
More likely would be the availability of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Apple has already covered the features several times, including WWDC, so the arrival is a foregone conclusion. Apple released 10.7 Lion the day after their Q2FY2011 call, so it's a far more likely scenario.