Thoughts Heading Into Apple’s 3Q25 Earnings Release
Hello everyone. Apple reports earnings on Thursday. For today's update, we will begin to prepare for the earnings release.
Thoughts Heading Into Apple’s 3Q25 Earnings Release
As we will discuss in greater detail tomorrow, Apple’s 3Q25 results should be relatively fine. Revenue growth will likely be close to 2Q25 levels while margins may get dinged a little bit by tariffs. And yet, the numbers themselves probably won’t matter a whole lot. Instead, Apple finds itself stuck in mud on Wall Street. A growing list of headwinds have contributed to Apple shares experiencing some of their worst underperformance relative to peers and the market in recent memory.
While every other Big Tech company has moved notably higher from the tariff-induced lows of early April, Apple has barely participated.
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Initial Thoughts on Apple’s 1Q24 Results, Apple’s 1Q24: By the Numbers, Parsing Apple’s 2Q24 Guidance
Apple’s 1Q24 earnings call was jam-packed with information. Unlike the average earnings call from Big Tech, Apple’s calls contain useful commentary and tidbits. More time will be needed to go through the disclosures, including the installed base information.
For today, we will look at the big picture from earnings, how the reported figures compared to my estimates, and Apple’s 2Q24 guidance.
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Reading Between the Lines of Apple’s 3Q23 Earnings Q&A With Analysts
Hello everyone.
In today’s update, we will focus on Apple’s 3Q23 earnings Q&A session with analysts. After recapping each question-and-answer exchange that occurred on the call between Apple and sell-side analysts, we will go over my thoughts / response to the exchange. Let’s go beyond what was talked about on the call.
NOTE: The following earnings call questions (“Q (Sell-Side Firm)”) and answers (“Cook” or “Luca”) have been cut, summarized, paraphrased, and rearranged for clarity. To read the full question and answer exchanges, Seeking Alpha offers a written transcript here.
Reading Between the Lines of Apple’s 3Q23 Earnings Q&A With Analysts
Consumer Behavior
Q (Morgan Stanley): How is the consumer behaving today versus 90 days ago? Are there geographical differences?
Cook: Emerging markets was a strength. China saw acceleration. Europe saw a record for the June quarter. There are “some really good signs in most places in the world.” The smartphone market remains challenging in the U.S.
My response: The going theory for why the U.S. has been the outlier in terms of iPhone weakness is that economic anxiety (higher inflation and rates) combined with consumer behavior shifts (budget shift to services, leisure, eating out, and travel) have strained the appetite for consumer electronics. It also should be pointed out that the U.S. has one of, if not the highest, iPhone sales share in the world. There are fewer people in a position to switch to iPhone.
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