After the markets closed on Wednesday, Apple (AAPL) will report its earnings for fiscal 2009 Q1. And once again blogger Andy Zaky has challenged the professional analysts – most of which in his view, idea – to do a very good job anticipating the results he and his blogger friends.
Last quarter, the round went to the bloggers, who over-estimated Mac sales, and hence total revenues, but were much closer to the mark in almost every other issue (see Apple Q4 earnings: analysis of analysts).
This quarter, the benefits Zaky expects to do even worse. “If previous earnings debacles were not embarrassing enough for analysts,” he writes, “then this should be one fourth of the books.” (Link)
Street – represented by Thomson Financial voting data – Apple expects to report a relatively anemic quarter, with earnings of $ 1.38 per share on revenues of $ 9.74 billion. (Apple offers a focus range: EPS between $ 1.06 and $ 1.35 on sales of between $ 9.0 and $ 10.0 billion.)
Zaky, who tracks Apple in a blog called Bullish Cross, is expecting a blow out quarter much better than the street consensus – as much as $ 1 billion – that trade in shares of Apple could be arrested. Estimates of colleagues, whom he calls the “non-affiliated analysts are more or less in line with theirs.
The key, according Zaky, will be adjusted – or non-GAAP – fully informed of the revenue income from sales of iPhone (see Spotlight on Apple hidden source of income).
Let’s find out who is right soon enough, thanks to scores Zaky has provided. He brought all analysts estimated it could have on their hands and mounted spreadsheets pasted below the fold. (It is a work in progress and may contain errors, analysts with corrections or updates to e-mail are welcome here.)