Final Expectations For Research-in-Motion Earnings (RIMM, AAPL)

Traders and investors alike are impatiently awaiting earnings out of smartphone giant Research-in-Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) today after the close.  The entire cell phone and electronic gadget market may be paying attention to this report.

The First Call are $0.85 EPS on $2.27 Billion in revenues.  Next quarter’s estimates are $0.90 EPS on $2.44 Billion in revenues, and the estimates for its Fiscal Feb-2009 are $3.88 EPS on $10.36 Billion in revenues.  The current estimates are the same as they were at the end of last week and there was only a $10 million revenue adjustment higher for next quarter and for Fiscal Feb-2009.

Options are going to be hard to use because there is almost 4 weeks to the July expiration.  On the surface it looks liek options traders are braced for a move of $9.25 or more in either direction.  Interestingly enough, the open interest before today in the four closest strike prices shows much more interest has been in teh PUT OPTIONS rather than the calls.

Analysts have an average of target price just over $160.00, although recent analyst targets hikes now have many expecting to see a $200.00 share price and higher.  Shares have come off about $8.00 from highs to lows over the last five days. 

While the companies are grossly different, you can expect that traders and analysts will be trying to interpolate all of the projection to see how this affects Steve Jobs and iPhone sales over at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).  One wild card that hasn’t been noted by many is the completely sold out status of Apple’s iPhone driving buyers to get Blackberry smartphones.  Apple will have lost an average of 45 to 60 days worth of iPhone sales as the old units were sold out and while it waits for the 3G iPhone to come to market.

R-I-M’s 52-week trading range is $53.10 to $148.13.

Jon C. Ogg
June 25, 2008