Apple reporting earnings yesterday.
They beat significantly lowered expectations on top & bottom line.
How excited were analysts? Not very. Only a few upgraded price targets (a bearish sign), and then only by small amounts (also a bearish sign).
AAPL tried to rally… but couldn’t make it over $300… and fell back for a loss on the day.
There’s a reason why 80% of analysts CUT price targets going into earnings… because the virus has really bashed Apple.
Here is the perspective:
Apple’s guidance for this quarter was a revenue range of $63b to $67b.
From Apple’s conference call yesterday, Tim Cook said:
Based on Apple’s performance during the first five weeks of the quarter, we were confident we were headed toward a record second quarter. At the very high end of our expectations.
That means they were on track for $67b. But actually it probably means they were on track for $68b to $70b… since Apple is notorious for sandbagging guidance.
But, with the virus, they only logged $58b in revenues. (Still a huge number, btw.)
Assuming even revenue distribution through the quarter, the $67b would have been about $22.3b per month… so theoretically the $58b was $22.3b + $22.3b + $13.4b, since the bulk of the virus problems hit in March.
So… if we take $13.4b as what they did in March… and assume an “uptick” for April (as Cook called it in the earnings call)… and assume things don’t really open up in U.S. or Europe until June… and assume a “normal” June… we could guess revenues might be $14b + $14b + $22.3b or about $50b…
… that’s if everything opens up in June and things go back to the “happy go lucky!” good times of Janurary.
Hello? Are any of the Apple fanboys bidding up AAPL listening? That’s still a big-ass revenue contraction… like 30% below a ballpark of what their pre-virus performance might have been… when the stock was hitting an all-time high of $327.85.
So why is AAPL currently trading just 10% below that now?
Because the reality of the next 1-2 quarters hasn’t sunk in for Apple investors yet.
Seems to me my simple, back-of-the-envelope hack calculations suggest AAPL should be down another 20%… or <$240.
And that’s not even including what happens if we see a second wave of infections… or if the market, which shot up in April, naturally cycles down 5-10% in May.
My 2 cents.
Royal Blog 