This is exactly my sentiment about AAPL.
How can a company with nearly $200 billion in cold hard cash, 20%+ yoy growth, no debt, a low P/E ratio of 12, decent dividend, a killer 2012 holiday season coming up, huge growth potential, world-wide appeal and popularity, and a $900 stock price target be doomed?
But you know that the killer 4Q12 holiday session will make less money than 4Q11 session, right?
http://seekingalpha.com/article/952...f4q12-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=4
As we indicated previously, revenue in that 14th week last year was approximately one 14th of the quarters total revenue. We expect revenues to be about $52 billion compared to $46.3 billion in the December quarter last year. We expect gross margin to be about 36% reflecting approximately $90 million related to stock-based compensation expense.
We expect OpEx to be about $4.05 billion including about $485 million related to stock-based compensation expense. We expect OI&E to be about $380 million, and we expect the tax rate to be about 26%. We are targeting EPS of about $11.75.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/952...arnings-call-transcript?page=5&p=qanda&l=last
As you pointed out, this is the most prolific product period in Apples history. We have an unprecedented number of new product introductions over the last six weeks, and this has led to record levels of demand. New or re-priced versions of our products announced during this time frame represent over 80% of the total expected December quarter revenue.
But there are costs associated with such dramatic change and demand. The iPhone 5, iPad Mini, iMac, MacBook Pro 13-inch, iPod Touch and iPod Nano have completely new form factors with great new features, and weve never before introduced so many new form factors at once. All of these products have higher costs than their predecessors, and therefore lower gross margins as they are at the height of the cost curve.
This has been the case with new products in the past, so nothing new. The difference this time is the sheer number of new products we are introducing in a very short period of time. Additionally, we lowered the price of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, delivering incredible value to our customer.
We head into this holiday quarter with the strongest iPhone line-up that we have ever had with the iPhone 4 starting at three in the subsidized markets. We also added the iPad Mini to our iPad line-up. The iPad Mini has the full iPad experience, and we priced it aggressively at $329, delivering incredible value to our customers. Its gross margin is significantly below the corporate average.
So in summary, we expect our gross margin to decline by about 400 basis points sequentially. We expect the benefit from positive leverage on a sequentially higher revenue and a greater mix of iPhone, but we expect these benefits will be more than offset by a number of factors.
