Earnings

Shaw Wu raises iPhone 5 estimates, lowers iPad mini

Bottom line: Margins up, revenues down, earnings unchanged. The stock: who knows?

FORTUNE -- Citing supply chain sources, Sterne Agee's Shaw Wu fine-tuned his Apple (AAPL) estimates again Wednesday:

He raised his iPhone unit sales estimates for this quarter to 47.5 million (from 47.3 million) based on improving yields and availability. (The iPhone 5 launched in Korea last Friday and lands in 50-plus more countries this Friday.)
He lowered his iPad estimates to 23.5 million (from 25 MORE

Apple Q4 earnings beat guidance, miss the Street's lowered expectations

Reports $36 billion in revenue, $8.2 billion profit and $8.67 earnings per share

FORTUNE -- Apple's (AAPL) reported mixed results Thursday. Although its sales of nearly $36 billion beat both its guidance and Wall Street's estimates, its earnings came up slightly short.

At $8.67 per share, they were higher than the company's usual conservative guidance of $7.05. But they were less than the $8.75 Wall Street was expecting -- and that number had MORE

Tech investors brace for a cruel summer

The living will most definitely not be easy. A sense of deep unease is settling in among technology investors as second-quarter earnings approach.

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

FORTUNE – Summertime may be when the living is easy for many people, but not for tech investors this year. As the time draws near for many companies to report their second-quarter earnings, a last-minute sense of unease is setting in among investors and analysts.

Since MORE

Silicon Valley's new fashion: The stock dividend

Over the past two decades, investing earnings in buybacks or future growth has trumped the stodgy old dividend ­ and nowhere more so than in the tech industry. That is changing.

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

FORTUNE -- As long as there have been dividends, there have been arguments between shareholders and company managers over whether to pay them. The strongest argument against paying dividends was profit growth: If a company can reinvest MORE

Why are blue-chip tech stocks so blue?

May -- not April -- was the cruelest month for quality tech stocks. And not just because of the botched Facebook IPO.

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

FORTUNE -- April, as T.S. Eliot famously said, is the cruelest month. But for investors who put their faith in tech stocks, it's hard to look back on the past month and feel good. No, the merry month of May has been cruel. And there's MORE

Can Tuesday's earnings report reverse Apple's 2-week slide?

Wall Street expects record results. The independent analysts are calling for a blowout

FORTUNE -- Savvy Apple (AAPL) investors know that the company's share price often gets dragged down in advance of its quarterly earnings reports -- only to spring back even higher when Apple delivers its usual earnings surprises. (See Cocking the Apple slingshot.)

But the stock's collapse over the past two weeks has even veteran traders scratching their heads. It MORE

Pros vs. Indies on Apple's Q2 2012: A $6.8 billion gap

The difference in their quarterly forecasts has never been so great

In the three and a half years that I've been pitting the analysts who cover Apple (AAPL) for Wall Street against the growing cadre of independent analysts who do it for fun (and, presumably, their own profit), I've never seen a gap this big -- either in dollar or percentage terms.

According to Thomson/First Call, the published consensus of 42 professional analysts MORE

eBay has yet to sell its turnaround to investors

The turnaround the company has been working on for four years is finally bearing fruit -- but investors don't seem convinced yet. Its earnings report this week is a chance to change that.

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

FORTUNE -- It wasn't the way any CEO wanted to start of a new year. eBay chief John Donahoe learned that Scott Thompson, the head of the company's fast-growing PayPal unit, was leaving to become MORE

Oracle: Warning of another tech slowdown?

The enterprise giant's stumble may not bode well for the technology sector -- and not just enterprise providers, but all big cap tech companies.

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

FORTUNE - Oracle missing its earnings guidance is like Mariano Rivera blowing a save opportunity, or Bob Dylan putting out a disappointing record. It happens, but not very often. And when it does, the only real question is: Why?

The answer matters beyond the world MORE

Sacconaghi: Apple's stock price reflects 'fantastically pessimistic assumptions'

Bernstein's top Apple analyst joins the chorus questioning the stock's dismal valuation

Last week, Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty noted that Apple's (AAPL) current stock price suggests that the market is expecting the company's earnings to grow minus 2% in perpetuity. (See here.)

In the first of a two-part series, Bernstein's Toni Sacconaghi on Monday drilled a little deeper into that -2% growth rate and found a series of what he calls "fantastically MORE