Apple Confirms Iphone X Woes: Iphone Sales Drop, Miss; Guidance Surprisingly Weak

It looks like neither Alphabet/Google nor Apple will hit $1 trillion in market cap after today’s earnings, with the former sliding – as noted previously – after it missed on earnings and TAC, while Apple reported Q1 results which missed on number of iPhones sold – which not only missed but actually declined 1.3% relative to last year – and on the company’s revenue guidance which was far weaker than expected.

Apple reported Q1 EPS and revenues of $3.89 and $88.3bn, both beating expectations of $3.84 and $87.3bn, and above the company’s own forecast range of $84-$87 billion, even if gross margin was in line, printing at 38.4% vs 38.4% expected despite an iPhone ASP of $796, above the $767 expected.

That’s the good news: the bad news was that Apple reported Q1 iPhone sales of 77.3 million, which was not only a drop from the 78.3 million iPhones sold last year, but bigly missed expectations of 80.2 billion.

Less relevant, iPad revenue gained 6% to $5.9b, after the company released new models in the middle of the year. Meanwhile, Mac sales fell 5% to $6.9b, even though Apple released new Macbook Pros over the summer. Apple had released new Macbook Pros just before Christmas 2016.

But what everyone’s attention was focused on, was Apple’s forecast for the next, Q2 quarter, in which Apple sees revenue of only 60-$62Bn, well below Wall Street estimates of $65.88 billion, on gross margin of 38-38.5%, below the 39% consensus estimate.

The full forecast in a nutshell:

As Bloomberg confirms, it’s was a big miss for Apple on the outlook, with the high end of its range almost $4b short of analysts expectations. That confirms investors’ worst fears that the strength of demand for the iPhone X won’t be sustained into the second fiscal quarter. Samsung releases the new Galaxy S9 on Feb 25.