To me, the biggest news here is the 1QFY12 guidance of $37 billion. Guidance of 30% above their best recorded quarter ever. Wow.

Yes, a monster guidance. And remember this is Apple's estimate, which is has always been a lowball recently (even for this quarter, which was a little disappointing). $40B is definitely possible.

Certainly the iPhone sales this quarter weren't that great, but given the circumstances (most people knew the 4s/5 was coming), as well the 4s sold 4 million units on its opening weekend (almost 1/4th of all of last quarter's sales), I don't think it was that bad at all.

Obvious disclaimer: long AAPL, may buy more tomorrow

Lowballing quarterly earnings seems to have been a Jobs thing. With Cook on the saddle I'm guessing this will be the pattern going forward.

Pretty hard to comprehend. Not only are the results stellar by pretty much any measure but they make Google's quarter look sluggish which is saying something.

Very impressive.

You're right. I just didn't include the guidance in the story title so it wouldn't sound like an ad for going long on the stock.

Yeah $37 billion guidance. guidance for the previous quarter was only $25 billion. holy crap.

iPads and Pods are always huge in holiday quarter plus the 4S rollout.

The headline could plausibly, and amusingly, be: "Apple Disappoints With 52% Year Over Year Profit Growth"

Note that apple, which has >50% YoY growth, is trading about about 16.5 P/E (ttm). Stock dropped about 6% after hours. As a point of reference, Yahoo also announced results ( revenues down 5% YoY), has a P/E of 17.5, and it's stock ROSE after-hours. Boggles the mind.

I'm not convinced the stock shift is fully explained by "missed estimates" as you notice here. The highest open interest was piled into the ~390 puts for most of the day and look where the stock wound up. This is relevant because the monthly options all expire on Friday. Earnings hasn't happened before options expiration in a while so there could be a lot of institutional play in the market to zero in a particular price to prevent options exposure in both calls/puts. Keep in mind only 0.95% of AAPL stock is owned by individuals[1].

[1] Checked holdings on a Bloomberg earlier out of curiosity.

EDIT: Some related theory:

http://www.aaplpain.com/Site/Home/Entries/2011/10/18_Apple_O...

Apple missed streets expectations. Please sell your stocks... so I can buy :)

Anything Apple does these days always disappoint analysts. Well, most analysts are overpaid for what they do anyway.

Financial Analysts has been underestimating Apple since 2004. This time they're pumping up the expectations.

Overall it is still a spectacular Quarter for Apple.

I just read about how the stock tumbled because the results were less than expected.

"Highest September Quarter Revenue and Earnings Ever" and it's a disappointment.

This is like the market equivalent of "eh, her knees are too pointy".

Scumbag stock market. Why not forget IPOs and stay private?

The reason the stock fell is because the expected results were built into the price. So when the numbers didn't meet the market's expectations, the price adjusted accordingly.

The expectations have nothing to do with where they were last year. Rather, they're built on forecasts of how the market (and Apple) think they will do in the future.

As already mentioned in this thread, expectations of how it WILL do for this quarter are astronomical. Sales numbers that are already in back this up.

Also see here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3128143

So, no, this shift is not explained by how anyone thinks Apple will do in the near future.

Good link. I'm not sophisticated enough to consider those aspects. I was really only referring to the spectre of beating YoY numbers by %50, and it still being considered "below expectations"

I am curious if the expectations had taken into account the slipped release. There is probably no doubt the slipped release hurt them, but typically, the new iPhone comes out June/July and probably fuels a large portion of their Q4. With the 4S just coming out, it will fuel their Q1 instead.

Additionally, if they did try to account for the late release, they probably had more people than expected holding off for the new phone. That could prove beneficial in Q1. Most of the articles call out that the dip in expectations will likely be short lived, pointing to the sales in the first days of the release.

The price seems to be dropping. $422.24 at close today and $393.74 after hours (@3pm pacific 10/18/2011)...

http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:AAPL

Analyst expectations missed. http://www.cnbc.com/id/44908357 Seems likely due to iPhone 4S shipping later than their normal cycle? That'd also be why guidance for the next quarter is so high I imagine?

Apple always lowballs guidance (note Apple beat its own guidance by about 2B I believe) so its up to the street to set their own view of what Apple should be making (on top of Apple's estimations). Of course they're just guessing based on past results so its way less accurate.

Its a bit of Apple's fault however. They're noted for low balling revenue guidance which is why the street likes to tack a few billion on whatever Apple says.

Give it a week, it will be back to where it was and more.

Gross margin was down 1.5% over last quarter. Anyone want to guess what lower margin products they sold more of?

I'd guess Macbook Airs, but there are certainly other contenders.

It's well known the iPhone 4 has the highest margin so selling fewer of those could account for the lower gross margin overall. [edit]Things like exchange rates can factor in as well.[/edit]

I'd also caution against reading too much into "demand waning" for the sales drop. Apple switched a lot of iphone 4 production to iphone 4S production to stockpile millions for the launch.

That makes perfect sense, thanks.

I'd be surprised to learn that the iPhone 4 was supply constrained over the last several months -- keep in mind that they're still selling the thing. I think it's been in stock pretty much the entire time.

(edit: meant to say supply constrained)

You don't compare numbers against the previous quarter, you compare numbers against the same quarter, the previous year.

Apple's gross margin this quarter was 40.3 percent, compared to 36.9 percent in the year-ago quarter

That's true of revenue, but as far as I know there's not as much annual cyclicity for margins.

I don't know much about consumer product sales, but I wouldn't think that it's entirely impossible that different products have somewhat different seasonal sales patterns.

People buy lots of laptops in August/September for back to school. People buy lots of iPods in December for gifts. People buy lots of iPhones in whatever quarter they launch a new iPhone in.

That's not always accurate, Apple's Q4 2011 and Q3 2011 are fine to compare here, the product mix particularly phones and ipads shipped are much closer then Q4 2011 and Q4 2010.

timing of product launches doesn't matter. In finance investors always compare year over year to evaluate the performance of their investments.

He's not evaluating the performance of an investment, he's asking why the margin is different which is generally a product mix question.

same thing applies. year-over-year comparisons are more accurate.

Not always and certainly not in this case.

@phil it's true for all numbers.

Why? Genuinely curious.

I only have two words to say: Truly staggering.