Apple Will Report Over $20 Billion In Quarterly Revenue, Blogger-Analysts Predict

Apple Will Report Over $20 Billion In Quarterly Revenue, Blogger-Analysts Predict














If Apple's earnings report on the 18th goes anything like its last few, the company will announce that it blew past $20 billion in quarterly revenue.


Apple has a habit of offering comically conservative guidance, and then basking in glory when it blows out expectations. Guidance for Q4 revenue is $18 billion. Phillip Elmer-DeWitt points out that if Apple beats that number by its average margin for the past three quarters -- 19.3% -- it will announce a staggering $21.5 billion.


Almost no one is willing to predict that big a win. But of the nine unaffiliated analysts Elmer-DeWitt looked at, seven predict revenue will be north of the $20 billion barrier.


Wall Street analysts are far less bullish, with a consensus of $18.76 billion. But, as Elmer-DeWitt points out, Wall Street analysts have been much more credulous of Apple's guidance in the past, and they've ended up looking much sillier for it














Wall Street was more than a little skeptical in July when Apple (AAPL) CFO Peter Oppenheimer offered his revenue guidance for the quarter that ended two weeks ago: $18 billion -- a 47% increase from Sept. 2009.

"We hadn't girded ourselves for a mammoth revenue forecast," wrote Oppenheimer's Yair Reiner the next day, "and neither, we believe, had the Street."

Like most analysts who follow Apple, Reiner assumed that Oppenheimer had abandoned his usual practice of low-balling the company's forward-looking statements and was trying to blow a little smoke up the Street's skirt. In the previous three quarters, Apple had beaten its own revenue guidance by an average of 19.3%. That would suggest actual Q4 revenues of nearly $21.5 billion -- a number Financial Alchemist's Turley Muller described at the time as "too mind-blowing to even contemplate."

A week after Oppenheimer's report, the Street's Q4 revenue consensus, according to Thomson Financial, was $18.29 billion -- a measly 1.6% beat. See Who buys Apple's $18+ billion quarter?

Three months and a few million iPhones and iPads later, most Apple watchers have changed their tune.


Of the nine blogger-analysts we polled, all but two expect Apple to report earnings of $20 billion or more, including Muller who's put his marker on $20.313 billion. Among the 21 professional analysts polled, only one --Rodman & Renshaw's Ashok Kumar -- has crossed that divide. On Thursday, Reiner hiked his estimate to $19.864 billion. The Street's consensus is $18.76 billion.

In the chart above, we've combined the pros and the bloggers to get an average estimate of $19.34 billion.