Earnings per share

Apple's Q4 2011: A tale of three wildly different estimates

Between the company, the Street and the amateur analysts, a range of $9.4 billion

Apple's (AAPL) fourth fiscal quarter of 2011 ended Saturday, and depending whose estimates you believe, it was either a ho-hum quarter or a record-smasher.

The chart at right shows the actual revenue and earnings per share for the previous 11 quarters -- Q1 2009 through Q3 2011. In the last three columns we've plotted three pairs of data MORE

Gene Munster: Why Apple's share price has lagged

Piper Jaffray offers 3 reasons investors are nervous and 3 reasons they shouldn't be

In a note to clients issued Wednesday morning, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster takes a crack at the question Apple (AAPL) investors have been asking since January: Why, despite one record quarter after another, is the stock going nowhere?

The three reasons he offers will surprise no one who has been following this blog: (I quote)

The stock is already MORE

The 5 things that worry fund managers most about Apple

A window into the concerns of the institutions that control 71% of the company's shares

As you may have noticed, Apple's (AAPL) shares have gone nowhere this year -- and nowhere but down for the past week -- despite earnings the grew 92% year over year last quarter and show no signs of slowing this quarter.

Whatever is going on with the stock price probably has something to do with the fund MORE

About Apple's P/E ratio

In 2007, it was trading for nearly 50 times earnings. Today it's 16.7. What happened?

I hate to quote Horace Dediu twice in one day, but sometimes it can't be helped.

Wednesday's post on his Asymco blog features the chart at right, which plots Apple's (AAPL) share price (blue line) over the past four and a half years set against multiples of earnings (15 x EPS, 25 x EPS, etc.). The chart MORE

Bloggers v. Pros on Apple: Another $2 billion revenue gap

With Q2 earnings due next week, the two groups of analysts are once again miles apart

The amateur analysts who follow Apple (AAPL) can afford to be more bullish than the professionals who do it for banks and brokerage houses. After all, unlike the sell-side analysts who are telling investors to buy the stock, they don't have clients who will be angry if the company doesn't exceed expectations.

But with Apple set MORE