What to Expect From Apple Earnings

[cnxvideo id=”625476″ placement=”ros”]Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is scheduled to report its fiscal first-quarter financial results on Tuesday after the markets close. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters call for $3.22 in earnings per share (EPS) and $77.38 billion in revenue. In the same period of last year, the consumer electronics giant posted EPS of $3.28 and $75.87 billion in revenue.

24/7 Wall St. also has put together a preview for all the Dow companies reporting this coming week.

Apple is among the most visible and popular brands in the world. It has become so large that it is the largest nongovernmental company, and it has a cash trove that is larger than the treasuries of most nations.

Despite all the positive sentiment that most analysts have surrounding Apple, one issued a call that was not in line with the general consensus. Earlier this month, Barclays downgraded Apple to an Equal Weight rating from Overweight and lowered the price target to $117 from $119. The good news here for the Apple bulls is that this downgrade has a lot of a valuation ring to it, even if some fundamental issues were brought up.

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There is a fear that iPhone sales will prove to be lackluster during this year. Barclays also pointed to the lack of major issues to move the needle in 2017. What is really being said here, particularly in light of such a close analyst target price, is that Apple is going to be dead money. Not all analysts agree with Barclays, but some other recent analyst calls express some of the same concerns.

Prior to the release of the earnings report, a fair number of other analysts weighed in on Apple:

• Bernstein reiterated an Outperform rating.
• Credit Suisse reiterated an Outperform rating with a $150 price target.
• Piper Jaffray reiterated an Overweight rating with a $155 price target.
• JPMorgan also reiterated an Overweight rating.
• RBC Capital Markets reiterated an Outperform rating with a $125 target.
• Baird reiterated an Outperform rating with a $133 price target.
• Cowen reiterated an Outperform rating.
• Macquarie has an Outperform rating with a $148 price target.
• Merrill Lynch has a Buy rating with a $140 price target.
• Morgan Stanley reiterated an Overweight rating with a $148 price target.
• Goldman Sachs reiterated a Buy rating with a $133 price target.

So far in 2017, Apple has outperformed the broad markets, with the stock up 5.3%. Over the past 52-weeks, the stock is up nearly 30%.

Shares of Apple closed Friday at $121.95, with a consensus analyst price target of $133.40 and a 52-week trading range of $89.47 to $122.44.

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