back to article Apple blows past (most) Wall Street moneymen's expectations

After Apple announced its new iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display last October, CEO Tim Cook offered the hopeful opinion that "it's going to be an iPad Christmas." Turns out his hopes were fulfilled. Apple has announced its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2014 – which happens to coincide with the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Peak apple?

    Well it looks like predictions of Apples demise were vastly exaggerated ;)

    Same can't be said of Samesung.

    1. Gordon 10
      FAIL

      Re: Peak apple?

      Tedious commentard. You'd have been much better stopping after the first sentence. The second was just trolling.

    2. ratfox
      Alert

      Re: Peak apple?

      A peak happens when the numbers are at their highest, not when they are going down. Consider the evolution of the number of iPhones sold in Q1 of the past years:

      2011 Q1: +82% YoY

      2012 Q1: +128% YoY

      2013 Q1: +29% YoY

      2014 Q1: +5% YoY

      No matter how you cut it, investors are disappointed that Apple beat its own record by so little.

      1. Simon Buttress

        Re: Peak apple?

        I just don't get what investors realistically expect from Apple (or any company in similar circumstances), they beat their earning target for the quarter, they pocketed $7 BILLION IN PROFIT IN 3 MONTHS yet people get pissed and their stock falls by 7%.

        FML There's something seriously wrong with humanity/humans if $900 profit each and every second that passes isn't enough to satisfy.

        1. An0n C0w4rd

          Re: Peak apple?

          @ Simon Buttress

          They're being hammered because of several things:

          - the analysts expected better results than what was reported. this probably says more about the value of analysts than anything else. there are plenty of El Reg articles commenting on the fact that analysts are largely useless as they try to take rumours and then earn a living from telling you what to expect. honestly, if analysts knew what they were doing they'd earn a much better living off their own investment portfolio than they do as analysts.

          - the future guidance was low. remember that you're commenting on what has happened. that is largely irrelevant. investors own stock because of what the future holds - in other words, they expect the stock to increase in value and that dividends, etc, keep their wallets fat. if they think that a company won't be able to deliver on growth they find acceptable they'll dump it like a hot potato. the fact that they continue to expect record growth each Q when the smartphone market is obviously approaching saturation or is already saturated is clearly unrealistic, but that doesn't stop them from punishing companies who fail to live up to the analysts expectations.

      2. SuccessCase

        Re: Peak apple?

        @ratfox, you are climbing up a hill and though you are still climbing the angle of climb has started to reduce. I know your desperate for that to be a peak, but for the rest of the world, it isn't. Indeed it looks as though for Apple that peak up ahead you are trying to will into the here and now is actually a false one. Apple have inked a deal with China mobile, which will be increasing the rate of climb again. So you're just going to have to be patient. Or go and find stories about Samsung to comment on.

        1. ratfox

          Re: Peak apple?

          I'm not desperate; I'm just showing numbers and explaining that people find them disappointing. If anything, your post shows a lot more angst than mine.

          If you have Apple stock, don't worry and wait for summer; it will go back up. However, I wouldn't expect Apple to double next year like it did so often in the past decade (to my personal benefit, I might add).

          1. SuccessCase

            Re: Peak apple?

            @ratfox Ok fair enough, It seems you were suggesting 2012 was the peak, however if the numbers going down you are referring too are not the percentage numbers you then proceed to give, you aren't misrepresenting anything. And yes it's true iPhone sales volumes are at the very least close to a peak. It seems the analysts expect every year to be like 2012 with, you know, exponential levels of growth, because that can happen forever if only Apple work hard enough, demographics be damned.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The Markets

      The markets act like Premiership Football club owners.

      In the short term they panic whenever they lose a couple of games and start looking for a new manager.

      Instead they should be looking at the long term prospects.

  2. Simon Buttress

    Mr Icahn

    On a positive note, by my maths, Mr Icahn has just lost 252 million dollars with a 7% price drop in Apple shares on his "no-brainer" 3.6 billion investment with Apple.

    That seems a lot of money.

  3. Steve Todd

    Buy on rumour, sell on news

    Unless a company has done spectacularly well they mostly go down when earnings are announced as dealers are working to the above maxim. Give it a few days and see what the price settles down to.

    1. Steve Todd

      Re: Buy on rumour, sell on news

      Aaand we're back up to $550, above yesterday's closing price already.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Peak sales = oncoming sales fall.

    Thus they will now resort to giving the customer what they want.

    That likely means a less ungrateful lot will buy their coming phablets.

  5. TheBoyBailey
    Trollface

    Wot - no Peak Apple meme ?

  6. Scoular

    The stock market and analysts have a disturbing tendency to expect the impossible from companies.

    A company coming off a low sales base has an opportunity for huge growth if they have an outstanding product as Apple did initially. To expect growth to continue at the same rate is absurd, all markets saturate after a while and big innovation steps are rare, that is why they get noticed when they do occur.

    Both Apple and Samsung will be around for a while yet and we should be grateful for that, we benefit from genuine competition.

    1. ratfox

      On the contrary; you are the one expecting too much from the stock price

      AAPL is at the same level as last September, just before the new iPhones were announced. At that time, the stock went down on uncertainty whether people would like the new phones. Then, investors realized the new phones were selling well, and the stock came back up. There was some exuberance which brought the stock higher, and when the numbers got released, the stock went back to its September level.

      Fact is, there is nothing at this point which makes Apple a more valuable company than in September. They had a record-breaking quarter as expected, but since it was expected, there is no reason for the stock to be higher than September.

      1. JaimieV

        Re: On the contrary; you are the one expecting too much from the stock price

        Right, no reason. The billions of extra dollars Apple has banked in the meantime don't signify.

        Stock prices are not closely related to the actual worth of the company they're attached to. Look at the numbers of share pumps in companies that are named a bit like a company that's been in the news, let alone the times a company (like Apple has at least once) has more in cash than their market cap. Apple shares go down on almost every product announcement (to much crowing) - then bounce back up (to much silence).

        Stock traders, en masse, appear to be a functionally retarded organism.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: On the contrary; you are the one expecting too much from the stock price

        "Fact is, there is nothing at this point which makes Apple a more valuable company than in September."

        Their bank balance seems to be climbing at a pretty fair clip

        1. ratfox

          Re: On the contrary; you are the one expecting too much from the stock price

          The fact that their bank balance has climbed was expected. The stock market is not a place where you can buy today for $1 something which everybody knows will be worth $2 tomorrow.

          In other words, the value of Apple in September was already taking into account the fact that their bank balance was going to grow. If this was not the case, the market cap of companies would always be exactly the sum of their bank balance and what you could get by selling everything it owns.

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