Toni Sacconaghi

Where will Hurd go next?

Mark Hurd's departure is mired in muck, but C-suite headhunters are sure to focus less on the rumors than on the possibilities.

Yes, I know. The focus is supposed to be on who will be the next CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). Quite right. The company is nuts to suggest it won't skip a beat with Mark Hurd's resignation last week. A new CEO will shake up the senior-management ranks, and the MORE

How many iPads did Apple sell in Q3?

The second in a series of previews of Apple's results for the third fiscal quarter of 2010

You might think that estimating iPad sales for the fiscal quarter that ended on June 26 would be a pretty easy call for analysts, given that Apple (AAPL) let it be known five days before the end of the quarter that it sold its 3 millionth iPad on June 21.

Yet the analysts we polled MORE

Apple: The bull case, the bear case

An analyst takes his quarterly look at the company from both sides now

There are a lot of superlatives being thrown around this week as analysts position themselves for Apple's (AAPL)'s fiscal third quarter earnings report, scheduled for July 20.

In a note to clients issued Wednesday, Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi, not always the company's greatest booster, called Apple "the most secularly attractive name in our coverage universe."

Brian Marshall of Gleacher & MORE

Report: Apple 'clicking on all cylinders'

A Barclays analyst leaves a meeting with top executives more bullish than ever

You wouldn't know it from Apple's (AAPL) share price -- which at one point Friday morning was down another $20, having closed Thursday off nearly $10 (see here) -- but there's nothing wrong with the company that some well-crafted Wall Street reform couldn't cure.

Analysts who pay attention to Apple's fundamentals have been issuing one positive note after another. MORE

iPhone gross profit margin nears 60%

An analyst takes a close look at Apple's margins and finds the Street's consensus lacking

Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi gets a lot of attention from critics when he shortchanges Apple (AAPL). (See, for example, The case of the missing iPhones.)

When he comes to praise Cupertino? Not so much.

Case in point: The largely unnoticed 13-page report he issued last week on the iPhone's gross profit margins, which he estimates at nearly 60%. MORE

Sacconaghi: How Apple sells 50 million iPhones in 2011

Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster -- an Apple optimist -- took a lot of heat when he predicted two years ago that Apple (AAPL) would sell 45 million iPhones in 2009. Unfortunately for him, the deal he expected Apple to strike in China still hasn't materialized, and he's since cut his 2009 expectations back to 25 million.

Now comes Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi -- usually considered an Apple pessimist -- with a MORE

The great iPod migration

How will Apple (AAPL) persuade 100 million iPod users to trade up to an iPhone? That's the problem Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi tackles in a report to clients Wednesday.

His answer: Make an iPhone that comes without a data plan -- currently $30 a month in the United States.

The opportunity for Apple is so attractive that he puts the odds of such a thing coming to market before the end of MORE

Apple sales data: Half empty, half full

It continues to amaze me that analysts who specialize in Apple (AAPL) can look at the same data and come to such different conclusions.

Case in point: Reports issued Tuesday morning by Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi and Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster.  Both analysts examined the latest NPD data -- released a day before Apple's fiscal Q1 earnings call  -- but they didn't see the same thing.

"Sales Weak," begins the headline in MORE