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Apple Expected to Report Best Financial Results Ever Today Amid Return to Growth

theluggage said:
So, that's 1/13 = 8% longer than the same quarter last year, when they earned $75.9bn.

By my calculation, that makes this quarters target $82bn - and that's assuming the extra days were "typical" ones, whereas:



So, given the highest prediction is $80bn, the real headline should be "Apple expected to announce fall in profits".

Of course, those days were "stolen" from another quarter, but if you count it over the year then you'll pull in the inevitable lull in sales due to people waiting for the new iPhone and MBP...



Well, the MacBook isn't their biggest source of profits - and this is the quarter where their biggest competitor in the phone market, Samsung, suffered an epic fail. Then, the MacBook strategy was 'make people wait 18 months for a new model then, when they're desperate to upgrade (considering that switching to Windows/Linux isn't an impulse decision), jack up the prices'...

So they really ought to have done well last quarter.
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It's true that the longer quarter makes for a bit of a distorted comparison. But there are factors that cut the other way as well. And the extra week (as compared to last year's first quarter) comes mostly after Christmas - it's 2 days in September and the last 5 days of December.

This year, an extra week of the new iPhone sales came in the 4th quarter rather than the 1st quarter. Last year almost all (i.e. all but 2 days) of the new iPhone sales came in the compared (i.e. the 1st) quarter. This year the iPhone 7 launch and thus some of that sales bump was pulled forward. Also, last year's revenue was helped by a 3.3 million unit iPhone channel build. Apple had expected the iPhone 6s not to do as well as the iPhone 6, but they underestimated how much less well it would do and in effect overbuilt the iPhone 6s and, by the end of the quarter, oversupplied it (at least as compared to previous 1st quarters).

Also, last year's 1st quarter benefited from accounting for a half billion dollar judgment against Samsung which this year's 1st quarter will not benefit from. There's also likely to be a negative YoY currency effect for this past quarter. How large will it be? I don't know, but maybe $1 billion. Apple estimated in October that it would be $650 million, but they obviously couldn't know what currencies would do over the rest of the quarter.
 
It's been fun window shopping for a mac the past 4 years. :rolleyes: Maybe this will be the year! All they got from me in 2016 was a purchase of an apple watch but it looks like there are a lot of sheep out there.
 
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you guys slay me. Tim and the Apple gang have a down quarter; "the end is near"...they have a good quarter "the end is almost as near". And all injected with "these guys don't know what they're doing". All because they don't make stuff the way "we" want. Well looks like the "we" dropped almost $80B in 3 months with these guys. Not a bad 90 days work. I cant think of any company that would NOT want that balance sheet. Yes, I wish there were some other products and enhancements...but I would not give up the apple products I'm using now. As for business: Way to kick ass Tim; congrats.
 
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skippermonkey said:
Terrible news. It will just reinforce Cook's strategy and result in fewer computer products that Apple fans actually want to buy. I just want a new Mac Pro. Is that too much to ask of the richest company in the world? Windows here I come... (sadly)
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Dude I really recommend listening to DaringFireball's podcast the Talk Show. In the latest they talk about how much money Apple have invested in the newest MacBook Pro, and speculate that if a similar amount had been invested in the trashcan Mac Pro, Apple would have needed to earn revenue from the product throughout 2014, 2015 and 2016...

The tl;dr is Apple seem to have messed up on the Mac Pro. But not from apathy or focusing on the wrong areas... but from releasing a product with a fundamental design flaw.
 
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Well there goes any hopes of getting a new iPhone instead of an iPhone6 with minor updates for the 4th year in a row.
 
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calzon65 said:
With all that profit, I think Apple could certainly afford to move some manufacturing to the USA.
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Sure they could. But unless they also use some of that profit to subsidize their pricing, no one will want to pay for Apple kit manufactured with the USA's labor cost...
 
macbookhair said:
If you're squeezing every last ounce of profit out of a company, you can see great increases. However, the long term implications of doing so, especially when this is at the expense of product innovation and service quality, are decline and eventual financial difficulties as customer goodwill is lost and the company falls behind the market.

So even if the results are good, it's not necessarily evidence that Apple is going to be OK in the long term. Especially if they are still heavily reliant on the iPhone for much of that revenue. If we were seeing world-beating products and innovation from Apple. it would be different, but we haven't been.
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Good financial results are met with comments like this one: Not evidence Apple will be okay in the long term.
Revenue down from the year before? Not evidence Apple will be okay in the long term.
Products like iPhone and Watch which receive a lot of criticism on launch? Not evidence Apple will be okay in the long term.
Apple experiences amazing growth when products like the iPhone do take off? They can't keep it up... not evidence Apple will be okay in the long term.

There is nothing I can recall Apple doing which makes naysayers on this forum saying "Actually, Apple is pretty much set up for a good few years now."
 
theluggage said:
So, that's 1/13 = 8% longer than the same quarter last year, when they earned $75.9bn.

By my calculation, that makes this quarters target $82bn - and that's assuming the extra days were "typical" ones, whereas:



So, given the highest prediction is $80bn, the real headline should be "Apple expected to announce fall in profits".

Of course, those days were "stolen" from another quarter, but if you count it over the year then you'll pull in the inevitable lull in sales due to people waiting for the new iPhone and MBP...



Well, the MacBook isn't their biggest source of profits - and this is the quarter where their biggest competitor in the phone market, Samsung, suffered an epic fail. Then, the MacBook strategy was 'make people wait 18 months for a new model then, when they're desperate to upgrade (considering that switching to Windows/Linux isn't an impulse decision), jack up the prices'...

So they really ought to have done well last quarter.
Click to expand...

Yes exactly. Because of that extra week, I think that title is a bit misleading. Plus gross margins also fell. I don't think this will have a positive impact on the share price.
 
Haha, love it.
So, to recap - the new MacBook Pro is crap, AirPods are crap, the iPhone 7 is crap, the line is dying, the brand finished and bankruptcy looms.
This site seems to have more than its fair share of false prophets.
Envy is a terrible thing.
 
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krazzix said:
Apple is DOOMED.

Oh no wait... Big earnings are a good thing.
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Yep it just shows Apple are still shafting their customers big time and the customers keep emptying their wallets like automatons. It's a mad world. :eek:

They haven't earned a penny from me now in over four years so I can afford to be smug. :p
 
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What's amazing is when Apple does launch a new product or service, it can do very well financially, but still means a tiny change in terms of % because of the elephant in the room... the iPhone.

Then there are people who criticise Apple's "reliance" on iPhone, like iPhone is an external force from another company which might be taken away.

If it ever was taken away, Apple had very successful remaining products. True there is a large halo effect from iPhone, but it isn't propping up the entire company. People would still buy Macs, iPads and other products.

I'd rather run Apple, with a "reliance" on iPhone, than Samsung's mobile business and be reliant on another company to keep the software and services side of things ticking along.
 
macbookhair said:
If you're squeezing every last ounce of profit out of a company, you can see great increases. However, the long term implications of doing so, especially when this is at the expense of product innovation and service quality, are decline and eventual financial difficulties as customer goodwill is lost and the company falls behind the market.

So even if the results are good, it's not necessarily evidence that Apple is going to be OK in the long term. Especially if they are still heavily reliant on the iPhone for much of that revenue. If we were seeing world-beating products and innovation from Apple. it would be different, but we haven't been.
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Yeah, nice try.

We are here talking about REVENUE. Revenue is volume * price people are willing to pay for your product.

Apple is doing more than alright, of course you don't like it, but doesn't change the fact.
 
faded_glory said:
Haha, love it.
So, to recap - the new MacBook Pro is crap, AirPods are crap, the iPhone 7 is crap, the line is dying, the brand finished and bankruptcy looms.
This site seems to have more than its fair share of false prophets.
Envy is a terrible thing.
Click to expand...

But the MacBook Pro would be great if only it was a bit cheaper, and had a 32GB of RAM option!! We want a new iMac, mac mini, MacBook Air, Mac Pro, routers, displays, new iWork, new Final Cut Pro X... and we also want Tim to just focus on a few great products like Steve would have done. Is that too much to ask?

It seems "complete crap" and "exactly what we want" are next to each other in this people's minds.
 
dumastudetto said:
Biggest ever earnings? That cannot be right. I've been told by many on here that Tim Cook is doing a terrible job and should be fired. #confused
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Take away the services growth. Tim continues to stifle innovation and prostitute shareholders as a CEO while running Apple as a COO. Luca Maestri has more to do with the numbers lining up that Tim could even attempt. The fact that EPS and revenue hit targets in no way establishes any proof of innovation, competence, quality of product. It simply means you have astronomical margins, and people who with pay $700 for a $500 device. No 5% gain in iPhone without the Note 7 failure either.

The name really should be Apple Media inc. :apple:
 
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ACG12 said:
Well there goes any hopes of getting a new iPhone instead of an iPhone6 with minor updates for the 4th year in a row.
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That seems entirely dependent on whether Apple can figure out how to make enough iPhone 8s for launch. I really hope they can, I don't want an iPhone 7S.
[doublepost=1485870366][/doublepost]
ghost187 said:
But the stock will go down because they didn't beat the market's expectations.
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I just wish the stock would dip low enough for Tim Cook to buy all of it, or for Apple to buy itself off the market. Then they can stop reporting this crap and the only way we can judge them is by how good the products are.
 
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Glideslope said:
Take away the services growth. Tim continues to stifle innovation and prostitute shareholders as a CEO while running Apple as a COO. Luca Maestri has more to do with the numbers lining up that Tim could even attempt.
The fact that EPS and revenue hit targets in no way establishes any proof of innovation, competence, quality of product. It simply means you have astronomical margins, and people who with pay $700 for a $500 device. No 5% gain in iPhone without the Note 7 failure either.

The name really should be Apple Media inc. :apple:
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Your post doesn't make any sense.

Apple products are more expensive because they are not crap and Apple sells because they make the best products.

Everything else is a WRONG opinion.

Apple is by far the most innovative company in their industry, that is a fact

https://media-publications.bcg.com/MIC/BCG-The-Most-Innovative-Companies-2016-Jan-2017.pdf
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faded_glory said:
Haha, love it.
So, to recap - the new MacBook Pro is crap, AirPods are crap, the iPhone 7 is crap, the line is dying, the brand finished and bankruptcy looms.
This site seems to have more than its fair share of false prophets.
Envy is a terrible thing.
Click to expand...

It's hard when reality hits them in the face.
 
I find it amusing how Apple may be perceived as doomed or in decline with its huge, almost infinite untapped potential.

Apple could, and will, enter and dominate many more market segments in the next 50 years.

Of course "dominate" means own most of the profits, as it happens today in wearables, PCs, tablets, wireless headphones, and smartphones.
 
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