Fortune has done its usual analyst poll ahead of Apple announcing its Q1 earnings tomorrow, and Wall Street is expecting the company to significantly out-perform its earnings guidance of $63.5 to $66.5B.
The consensus among the analysts Fortune polled — 20 professionals and 15 amateurs — is that Apple’s total sales for fiscal Q1 2015 will come in at about $68.3 billion, up 21% year over year.
That would be $1.8B above the upper end of the expectations Apple set back in October …
Apple also said then that it expected its gross margin to come in between 37.5% and 38.5%, but it has been suggested that the popularity of the iPhone 6 Plus, along with customers upgrading to the middle storage tier after Apple boosted it to 64GB, may have boosted margins.
Fortune suggests that anticipated high sales numbers of the iPhone 6 Plus will have played a major role in analyst expectations, with the all-time high in Mac sales forecast predicted by IDC also contributing to high expectations despite declining iPad sales. The consensus expectation is for Apple to announce 66.5M iPhone sales.
Apple stock has climbed in recent days, currently sitting within 6% of its all-time high. Subsequent share movements are likely to reflect any difference between expectation and reality, as well as the company’s guidance for the following quarter.
As always, we’ll be bringing you all the numbers tomorrow.
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After hours trading = +8%
Makes sense given the boatloads of iPhone 6 and 6 Pluses they sold up until now.
I would love to hear from all the uninformed “analysts” who were calling for Tim Cook’s head a few months back!
They’re probably the same ones references in this post.
With Apple you can’t rely on any analyst for information. Listen to Apple’s own guidance and roll.
I’m just wondering how much the stock is going to drop following the earnings call. It happens every time.
I’m in long-term but it’s still sad to see AAPL continually undervalued.
I have a gut feeling it’s going to be different this time and we’ll see a nice, long-overdue pop!
Often, but not “every time”.
(Also long AAPL.)
Apple sales will be amazingly strong because of one factor: the gigantic pent-up demand for a larger-screen iPhone. Indeed, sales have been roaring almost worldwide for the the iPhone 6 model, mostly at the expense of larger-screen Android models.
and why Apple stock price fking dropped so far today? This’s crazy Wall Street game.