Apple to report 2nd best quarter in company history?

After a round of checks with its industry and channel sources, analysts for American Technology Research said they believe Apple later this month will post the second best quarterly results in the company's 30-year history, exceeding its own guidance of $4.3 billion in revenue and 38 cents in earnings per share.

"Specifically, we are modeling $4.4 billion, 43 cents and 8.8 million iPods versus consensus of $4.6 billion and 44 cents," analyst Shaw Wu told clients in a research note issued on Tuesday. "For the June quarter, we continue to believe Apple will guide conservatively reflecting efforts to reduce inventory of PowerPC Macs and older iPod nanos."

The analyst is modeling for the June (current) quarter $4.4 billion, 44 cents and 8.5 million iPods versus the Street's consensus of $4.7 billion and 48 cents. "We believe consensus revenue estimates remain unrealistically high and believe Apple will likely make another attempt to reset expectations," Wu wrote. "Given the recent 16 percent run-up in Apple shares, we would not be surprised to see a pullback post-print."

Nevertheless, the analyst said he'd remain a buyer on weakness and believes the company is well-positioned to deliver upside with strong second half seasonality and product momentum, including new low-cost Intel portables and changes in its iPod line-up.

American Technology Research maintains a "Buy" rating on Apple shares with a price target of $101.00.

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10 Comments

ireland

said about 18 years ago

We'll see, but looks very good indeed!

SpamSandwich

said about 18 years ago

I hope those numbers play out... stock's been dipping a little low recently...

sunilraman

said about 18 years ago

There's too much backwash from the Intel transition and now BootCamp. It's thrown the market into a bit of wait-and-see attitude, I think.

With CS3 and Intel PowerMac equivalents far off the pro market seems stagnant. Or growth levels being status quo

The next 6-12 months will be critical for Apple to deliver profit growth via primarily the consumer channels (Macbook, iMac, Mac mini, new(?) iPods).

Several critical junctures are up for analysis.

1. April reporting of Jan-Mar '06 revenue and profit
2. July reporting of April-June '06 revenue and profit
3. Mac OSX Leopard in August '06 WWDC
4. Clarification at/by WWDC on what the hell the Windows dual-boot and possibly virtualisation is all about
5. Towards the end of the year - Intel PowerMac equivalents for running Final Cut Studio, Logic and Rosetta'ed or virtualised CS2/Macromedia

Stevie J has to hit all the right notes IMHO on the above 5 critical points for AAPL to be in the high $90s by the end of the year. In the mid-term (6-8 months) I predict AAPL flirting with the $70s, maybe low $80s, with some sliding back to high $60s given the Intel/ new product transitions... 8)

My brother got in on $62 so that's probably a good baseline to move upwards from, but again, like I said above, it will be gradual as the market needs more clarification on what Apple's plans really are.

mdriftmeyer

said about 18 years ago

Quote:

Originally posted by sunilraman
There's too much backwash from the Intel transition and now BootCamp. It's thrown the market into a bit of wait-and-see attitude, I think.

With CS3 and Intel PowerMac equivalents far off the pro market seems stagnant. Or growth levels being status quo

The next 6-12 months will be critical for Apple to deliver profit growth via primarily the consumer channels (Macbook, iMac, Mac mini, new(?) iPods).

Several critical junctures are up for analysis.

1. April reporting of Jan-Mar '06 revenue and profit
2. July reporting of April-June '06 revenue and profit
3. Mac OSX Leopard in August '06 WWDC
4. Clarification at/by WWDC on what the hell the Windows dual-boot and possibly virtualisation is all about
5. Towards the end of the year - Intel PowerMac equivalents for running Final Cut Studio, Logic and Rosetta'ed or virtualised CS2/Macromedia

Stevie J has to hit all the right notes IMHO on the above 5 critical points for AAPL to be in the high $90s by the end of the year. In the mid-term (6-8 months) I predict AAPL flirting with the $70s, maybe low $80s, with some sliding back to high $60s given the Intel/ new product transitions... 8)

My brother got in on $62 so that's probably a good baseline to move upwards from, but again, like I said above, it will be gradual as the market needs more clarification on what Apple's plans really are.

Let's do ourselves a favor and stop equating Apple's succcess with the future release of any Adobe product. It's quite clear that Adobe hasn't been a catalyst to grow Apple's market presence: only Apple has been able to do this with introducing their own application suites.