What you need to know
- Apple is holding its quarterly earnings call on Wednesday.
- The company will announce figures for Q4 of fiscal year 2019.
- Analysts expect the results to be good, but not huge.
Apple's Q4 earnings will be announced soon.
Apple will be sharing its Q4 earnings on Wednesday and analysts are eager to see how things pan out. Apple's guidance last time out was somewhere between $61 billion and $64 billion. Analysts believe that the reality will be somewhere in the middle.
With the call just two days away Philip Elmer-DeWitt (via 9to5Mac) has been canvassing analysts to see how they feel things will go down on Wednesday. The most pessimistic, Visible Alpha, believes that Apple's earnings will sit at around $62.87 billion for the period. That's still better than halfway between Apple's estimates.
Other analysts are more bullish with the average of all the predictions coming out at $63.51 billion. That's closer to the top end of Apple's guidance, but DeWitt is of the belief that this doesn't represent a huge deal for Apple because the current stock price already has that outcome "largely baked in." In other words, it won't move the needle on Apple's share price.
But things could change in the coming quarters. Business Insider notes that by growing Services revenues Apple could have Apple TV+ to thank for an upcoming boost. None of the Apple TV+ figures will have a bearing on Wednesday's call.
The report also arrives just days before the release of Apple TV+, so any guidance on how quickly it will grow subscribers or how much the company is budgeting for original content could grab headlines.
Finally, the report should detail whether Apple's bet on its Services business continues to thrive or is beginning to fizzle out. The company is relying more on its service offerings to drive revenue as the iPhone upgrade cycle lengthens, so any drop in growth could spell disaster for the record share price.
You can listen in to Apple's earnings call on Wednesday, if you're so inclined.