Earnings Smackdown

By how many billions is Wall Street low-balling Apple?

With Q1 earnings due next week, the Street and the bloggers are now $4.5 billion apart

Perhaps professional analysts are just more comfortable underestimating Apple (AAPL). Perhaps they're still smarting from last quarter, when their numbers (for once) came in too high. Perhaps they're suspicious of reports that suggest that Mac and iPhone and iPad sales have never been so strong.

For whatever reason, Wall Street's estimates for what everybody seems to agree MORE

iPad sales estimates for Q1 range from 11.7 to 19.5 million

The Street's consensus: 13.5 million. The indies are 10% more bullish

Everybody we've heard from expects Apple (AAPL) to report record iPad sales for the quarter that ended Dec. 31.

And why not? Tablets were a popular gift item this past holiday season. The iPad 2 didn't face much competition -- except perhaps from Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle Fire. And although there were rumors of an iPad 3 coming in March or April, MORE

How many iPhones did Apple sell last quarter?

Pros and amateurs both expect a blow-out. They're just haggling over the percentage

The most important metric  for Apple (AAPL) in the quarter that ended eight days ago -- likely to account for more than half of the company's revenue for fiscal Q1 2012 -- is the number of iPhones it sold from Sep. 25 to Dec. 31.

We've polled nearly 40 Apple analysts -- professionals and independents -- and for once they MORE

Apple to announce first quarter 2012 earnings on Jan. 24

Mark your calendars for what's expected to be a monster quarter

Apple (AAPL) investor relations has scheduled a conference call with analysts on Tuesday, Jan. 24 at 5 p.m. ET (2 p.m. PT) to discuss its first fiscal quarter results.

Given last summer's pent-up demand for the new iPhone that was finally released in October, this should be a big one.

The Street's consensus, as reported Tuesday by Thomson Reuters, is for earnings MORE

Bloggers vs. Pros on Apple's Q1 2012: A $5 billion gap

If you ask about sales in the quarter that just ended, you get two very different answers

How did Apple (AAPL) do in the quarter that ended Saturday?

That depends whom you ask.

The consensus among nearly four dozen professional analysts, according to Thomson Reuters, is that Apple will report record earnings of $9.83 on record sales of $38.17 billion, up 52.8% and 42.7%, respectively, from the same quarter last year.

No way, say MORE

Apple earnings smackdown: The bloggers got clobbered

For the first time in more than 3 years, the pros out-analyzed the upstarts

Let's leave aside for now the question of whether Apple's (AAPL) failure to meet analysts' expectations last quarter (see here) was the company's fault or the analysts'.

This is the exercise in which we divide those analysts into two groups -- the pros and the amateurs* -- and pit their estimates against each other. (See footnote on nomenclature.)

The MORE

Apple poised to report another record-breaking quarter

Setting the stage for a monstrous Christmas selling season

It's been a busy fortnight for Apple (AAPL), between the Let's Talk iPhone special event, the death of Steve Jobs, the launch of the iPhone 4S and Sunday's star-studded memorial service. Next week we'll get the worldwide laydown of  Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, the only biography written with Jobs' cooperation, launching another round of media overkill (starting with next Sunday's 60 Minutes).

But today is about MORE

Our Apple whisper numbers

We're averaging the Q4 estimates of the six analysts with the best track records 

The chart at right, which compares Apple's (AAPL) reported earnings for the past six quarters with estimates made in advance of those reports, shows that some analysts are better at predicting the company's results than others.

Specifically, a group of independent analysts we've been calling -- for lack of a better term -- "the bloggers," have consistently out-performed MORE

Apple expected to report record Mac sales this week

On this one, most analysts agree: Summer '11 was even bigger than Christmas '10

The Mac was one of the few products that failed to live up to expectations in the June quarter (Apple's fiscal Q3). Analysts were looking for sales of 4.2 million. What Apple (AAPL) delivered was 3.95 million.

That's not likely to happen again on Tuesday, when Apple reports its earnings for fiscal Q4.

Everybody seems to agree that MORE

iPad sales estimates for Q4 range from 8.8 to 14.8 million

The Street's consensus: 11.4 million. The indies are 15% more bullish

In preparation for our Apple (AAPL) earnings smackdown for the last fiscal quarter of 2011, which ended in September, we've gathered estimates from the small army of analysts -- institutional and independent -- who track the stock.

Last Tuesday we previewed their revenue and earnings estimates. The next day it was their iPhone unit sales numbers. Today we look at their estimates for Apple's fastest-growing product MORE