They sold roughly 60M units of high margin products in one quarter. They are printing money for years now.
One of the quotes usually around this is "they did not meet the expectations of analysts" and i really dislike it.
Hopefully someday we will move away from quarter performance.
The amazing thing about this quarter's performance is the 47.4% gross marging.
How often does a company as widely followed as Apple post a number so amazing that it beats even the most rabid fanboy analyst's predictions? (At least among the 52 guesses that Philip Elmer-DeWitt rounded up[0])
Analysts were actually below what was posted this quarter. Next quarter looks to be disappointing for analysts, they are aiming higher and Apple's guidance is lower ...
Apple always low-balls their guidance and it is always well below most analyst estimates, so nothing to go on there.
Even their "bad" quarter Q4 2011 had a guidance of $25 billion and $5.50 earnings per share with actual numbers of $28.27 billion and $7.03 a share (which was up from $20.34 billion and $4.64 per share in Q4 2010).
comparisons are always yoy. comparing the current quarter with the previous quarter doesn't make sense due to seasonality (holiday season, summer, etc.).
"Overall hardware sales decreased from its record previous quarter but with the notable exception of the iPods: they’re up from the same quarter a year ago." > "However, the iPod didn’t fare so well: Sales are down 15% over last year’s quarter."
So 3 iPads for every Mac. The average selling price of an iPad is ~$600 [1], so if the average selling price of macs are less than $1800 (likely), the iPad is bigger in revenue than the Mac.
Last quarter was a holiday quarter, so I think the drop in iPhone sales is expected. They only sold 2 million fewer in this quarter, which I think is pretty amazing.
i remember one analyst telling, chinese new year is important for smartphone sales too. but the big question is why is ipad/mac sales are below expectations? didnt the new ipad help much?
I'll tell you why that can be described as disappointing. Apple is extremely profitable. Sales are climbing at a great rate. Shares of ownership (and by proxy, a share in that profit) are priced according to this wild growth and profitability. The market buys stock based on this expected growth and return. When the expected return is less than the actual return, this is disappointing EVEN IF THE RETURN IS 150%.
This like buying an expensive sports car and having it ONLY go 150MPH when similarly priced cars can reach 200MPH. 150MPH is great compared to a stock Honda Civic, but you will be disappointed when your friends best you with their supercars, because you paid so much. Apple stock is a supercar stock, so when it doesn't perform at supercar standards, the market is disappointed.
First: the market is actually not disappointed. If that were the case, the stock would not be up substantially by real people spending money to buy the stock on the basis of this news. The market likes this news, the (clueless) writers at media outlets were disappointed.
Your analogy also misses on a number of levels. But to make it crystal clear, I'll correct it. Today's results are like buying an economy car in a price band where similarly priced cars can reach 60 MPH and finding out that yours goes 800 MPH and being disappointed. For a share of AAPL is priced more like a Kia than a Ferrari relative to its growth.
To clarify: the stock is not expensive by any classical valuation metric. The stock is trading at a multiple of < 16, which is lower than companies in much slower-growing businesses. For example: McDonald's (18), Procter & Gamble (20), Coke (20). In fact, the Dow Jones index of utility stocks trades at a higher earnings multiple. And now there's a dividend in case 100% EPS growth isn't enough for an investor. So unless your idea of an expensive high-flying stock is a stodgy utility, AAPL is absolutely not priced for wild growth and profitability.
I suppose I should have clarified. I didn't pay attention to any of the AAPL news or reportings. I was trying to describe how something objectively 'good' by normal standards could be construed as 'disappointing' to the market. I didn't mean to imply this was the case with AAPL, but I suppose the context of my post makes my intention ambiguous.
Waiting for the Ivy Bridge refresh myself. (not that it's an Earth shattering improvement over Sandy Bridge based machines but I have no urgent need to buy right now so I don't mind waiting)
It was estimated that they will sell 11.9 million iPads and they sold 11.8 million. So wouldn't say they missed by much. Also, the new iPad began selling on March 16th and the quarter ended March 31st. So the real effect of the new iPad should come this quarter.
The story which The Atlantic quotes from in support of their 13 million consensus estimate actually says:
"The most pessimistic analysts are calling for sales of just 9 million; the most optimistic see sales of over 15 million. Consensus is for about 12 million, which would be a year-over-year increase of 155%."
Couldn't find a description on how consensus was derived (is it an arithmetic mean?). Depending on how much of an outlier the 15 million estimate was, 11.8 million actual sales might actually be above the median estimate.
Looks like Apple was well below the median, though PED says the 6 most accurate analysts he has been tracking had a consensus estimate of 10.95 million iPads.
Sales dry up before a new launch and after it they are constrained by supply. Also the iPad 3 was on sale at March 16th only in America. In Europe (Japan?) it was March 23.
I agree with the points you are making, but the iPad did in fact launch in ten countries on March 16th, including many important European countries (like Germany) and Japan.
This qarter only includes two weeks of the sale of the new iPad.
Also, just now it was said on the call that they are selling iPads as fast as they can make them, so they are still supply-constrained. They either couldn't make as many iPads as analysts predicted (though, actually, analysts were very close, to say Apple missed the estimate doesn't really make much sense) or iPad 2s tailed off faster than analysts expected.
