I ended the day happy to be long, feeling okay about something driven by emotions and not logic. Now I feel like shit, after Apple warned about their business sucking cocks. We already knew it — but now the box has been opened and we can all see the cat is, in fact, dead.
Here is part of Tim Cocks letter to shareholders. Happy fucking New Year.
To Apple investors:
Today we are revising our guidance for Apple’s fiscal 2019 first quarter, which ended on December 29. We now expect the following:
Revenue of approximately $84 billion
Gross margin of approximately 38 percent
Operating expenses of approximately $8.7 billion
Other income/(expense) of approximately $550 million
Tax rate of approximately 16.5 percent before discrete itemsWe expect the number of shares used in computing diluted EPS to be approximately 4.77 billion.
Based on these estimates, our revenue will be lower than our original guidance for the quarter, with other items remaining broadly in line with our guidance.While it will be a number of weeks before we complete and report our final results, we wanted to get some preliminary information to you now. Our final results may differ somewhat from these preliminary estimates.
When we discussed our Q1 guidance with you about 60 days ago, we knew the first quarter would be impacted by both macroeconomic and Apple-specific factors. Based on our best estimates of how these would play out, we predicted that we would report slight revenue growth year-over-year for the quarter. As you may recall, we discussed four factors:
First, we knew the different timing of our iPhone launches would affect our year-over-year compares. Our top models, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, shipped in Q4’18—placing the channel fill and early sales in that quarter, whereas last year iPhone X shipped in Q1’18, placing the channel fill and early sales in the December quarter. We knew this would create a difficult compare for Q1’19, and this played out broadly in line with our expectations.Second, we knew the strong US dollar would create foreign exchange headwinds and forecasted this would reduce our revenue growth by about 200 basis points as compared to the previous year. This also played out broadly in line with our expectations.
Third, we knew we had an unprecedented number of new products to ramp during the quarter and predicted that supply constraints would gate our sales of certain products during Q1. Again, this also played out broadly in line with our expectations. Sales of Apple Watch Series 4 and iPad Pro were constrained much or all of the quarter. AirPods and MacBook Air were also constrained.
Fourth, we expected economic weakness in some emerging markets. This turned out to have a significantly greater impact than we had projected.
In addition, these and other factors resulted in fewer iPhone upgrades than we had anticipated.
These last two points have led us to reduce our revenue guidance. I’d like to go a bit deeper on both.Emerging Market Challenges
While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China. In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad.
China’s economy began to slow in the second half of 2018. The government-reported GDP growth during the September quarter was the second lowest in the last 25 years. We believe the economic environment in China has been further impacted by rising trade tensions with the United States. As the climate of mounting uncertainty weighed on financial markets, the effects appeared to reach consumers as well, with traffic to our retail stores and our channel partners in China declining as the quarter progressed. And market data has shown that the contraction in Greater China’s smartphone market has been particularly sharp.Despite these challenges, we believe that our business in China has a bright future. The iOS developer community in China is among the most innovative, creative and vibrant in the world. Our products enjoy a strong following among customers, with a very high level of engagement and satisfaction. Our results in China include a new record for Services revenue, and our installed base of devices grew over the last year. We are proud to participate in the Chinese marketplace.
iPhone
Lower than anticipated iPhone revenue, primarily in Greater China, accounts for all of our revenue shortfall to our guidance and for much more than our entire year-over-year revenue decline. In fact, categories outside of iPhone (Services, Mac, iPad, Wearables/Home/Accessories) combined to grow almost 19 percent year-over-year.
While Greater China and other emerging markets accounted for the vast majority of the year-over-year iPhone revenue decline, in some developed markets, iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be. While macroeconomic challenges in some markets were a key contributor to this trend, we believe there are other factors broadly impacting our iPhone performance, including consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies, US dollar strength-related price increases, and some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements.
Bottom line: Nasdaq futures are -1.6%. I know spreadsheetFAGS are punching numbers in now, suggesting that even at $11.00 for 2019, AAPL is cheap. That’s not how this works. This is slope that is slippery and it might be the first of a series of earnings revisions. The downside to AAPL, in my estimation, is 50% EPS cuts and a price target of $110, based off a 16 multiple. Let’s not forgive this company for borrowing $115b to buy back shares either. One can only hope markets ignore this and rally anyways. I’d have a very hard time believing it will be possible, due to the notion that Apple is only the tip of the iceberg here, in what should be expected to be a dreadful Q1.
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Funny thing is 2018 stock buy back will be a loss to earnings. Especially the old highflyers.
cant stand the “buy back” BS stories and great it is.. tide just went out
Buffet to buy more?
Crazy Donald.strikes again.
I know some of you are panicking over this news and the Fly is right – PEs don’t matter in this case. But to me this is a story about Chinese consumers boycotting AAPL, not a slowdown in China. Stay the course. We shall be higher a month from now.
Apple phones in China are simply status symbols. Huawei phones are every bit as good if not better. I have 2 Huawei phones. Unfortunately, one is an English (as in UK) version and won’t stop giving me cricket scores, lol.
This is a trade war and although the US economy is probably stronger, we don’t have the stomach for it.
And, until all tech obsessed fuckers (all the brokers and fund managers included) who have driven our equity markets to 3x GDP lose half their life savings, this market will not stop dropping.
I told you to put on your winter shorts yesterday, btw.
Speaking of Buybacks.
AAPL Shares outstanding decreased by 5% in 2018. Does this mean that of the 7% price gain, that 70% or 5 / 7 of their gains were in fact buybacks?
(Unless I’m missing something with the correlation, 70% of the chart going long is buybacks.)
I wonder what the Oracle of Omaha has to say about Schrödinger’s cat’s demise?!
The Oracle of Omaha has never stockpiled so much cash in his life. AAPL has one of the best P/E ratios out of all the BS out there.
Half of these fucktards will sell their left Kidney for an Iphone or Macbook no matter the financial conditions.
Record Cash holding from the Ocacle
https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-cash-balance-should-worry-investors-2018-8
“Just to check your math here:
(84*0.38 – 8.7 + 0.550 ) * (1-0.165) = ~$20B (about the same as a year ago)
You think they will make only $10B in the next 3 qtrs **combined**. No way this stock hits $110 in 2019.”
– spreadsheetFAG