Morgan Stanley: Mac shipments on the rise
According to Morgan Stanley's Kathryn Huberty, Apple (AAPL) is the computer maker with the "most upside" as the PC market begins to stabilize after the dismal first quarter of 2009.
There's some good news for Hewlett Packard (HPQ) and Dell (DELL) in the report to clients Huberty issued overnight Wednesday, but it's mostly attributed to enterprise cycles and inventory restocking.
Apple, however, is a different story.
"Even before the new Macbook Pros launched," she writes, "Apple began to outperform the broader commercial PC segment — with commercial Mac shipments up 25% [month over month] in May versus market growth of just 1%."
The fact that the new laptops arrived in early June means that they will provide what Huberty calls "a catalyst for growth" in both the June and September fiscal quarters. She points to NPD weekly shipment data (reproduced in the chart at left) showing steady acceleration of Mac shipments over the past few weeks. "Lastly," she concludes, "suppliers have recently noted Mac unit upside in the quarter."
Huberty is raising her forecast for Mac sales in the second calendar quarter (Apple's fiscal Q3) to 2.5 million units, up from 2.4 million. That would represent 12% quarter to quarter growth — less than Apple's 14% average over the past three years, but a lot better than the 4% QtoQ decline last quarter.
For the fiscal quarter than ended Saturday, she expects Apple to report earnings of $1.16 a share on PC revenue (i.e., not including iPhones, iPods, etc.) of $3.072 billion, up a point or two from her previous estimates.
Huberty has not always been so bullish on the Mac. In fact, one of her reports last September helped trigger the sharpest one-day fall in Apple's share price in eight years, one that wiped $18 billion off the company's market cap in the space of 60 minutes. See Why Apple's shares took a nosedive.
Some models of the MacBook Pros are selling out at many apple stores, though you can find them in other places. The online Apple store has a week wait on the 2.53 Ghz 13 inch model, so I think sales of some models could be exceeding expectations.
Yes and that report that triggered the selloff was based upon a survey by Changewave that turned out to be false, okay, misinterpreted at best. Why do people still cite Changewave surveys when they have proven to be unreliable for anything other than large trends. Microanalysis of those surveys is fraught with error.
I've been expecting this other shoe to eventually drop. A lot of the "dip" in Mac PC sales was clearly attributable to people holding off and waiting for the new stuff. Now the waiting has ended, and the pent-up demand is making itself noticeable.
Totally predictable. And as such, it does make you wonder how all these so-called "analysts" could have missed it.
And while we're on the subject, the REALLY big aspect that analysts are missing, IMHO, is the "draw" offered by iPhones and iPods. People are buying them that never before even considered owning an Apple product. And that will often bring these new Apple owners into Apple's retail stores, where for the first time they see technology that's cutting edge and very, very sexy.
Apple's never forgotten that its core business is PC's, you see. There's not the slightest doubt in my mind that the advent of "pocket computers", as I call them, is being purposefully surfed by Apple to take them to truly big time computer sales.
They may even start to crack the business market. Now won't that be something!
It's true that these analysts aren't very trustworthy, but what type of investors does Apple have that seemingly dump Apple stock at the least provocation. Apple users are supposed to be educated and yet Apple investors seem so ignorant that they don't pay any attention to company fundamentals and yet believe in a couple of analysts future predictions. Apple is just too volatile based on speculation and rumors.
Any time an analyst looks a couple of months in advance and predicts a decline in sales based on other companies performance is really mere speculation. If HP and Dell are losing sales it is assumed that because Apple's prices are higher, their sales and revenue will fall off more and yet this is typically not the case. Yet these so-called investors start dumping the stock the moment a couple of half-baked analysts speak. Pathetic. The analysts are either ignorant or doing it to purposely manipulate Apple's share price down. Crooked analysts and wary Apple investors should both take the blame.
3.072 bil in revenues for the quarter? Isn't that about 5 bil short?
ex ped: That's PC revenue only. Recast to clarify.
Well this is a definite change in Huberty's sentiment for Mac given last fall she was so adamant that Mac sales were going to completely evaporate from the shifting PC demand to netbooks. She still has a way to go on her Q3 estimates though.
Revenue of $3.072 billion? Typo?
ex ped: On closer look at Huberty's report, I see that she's talking about PC revenue, not total revenue. Fixing that now.
It's about time the analyst community starts looking at -correlations- of sales figures to see that Apple computer sales are doing better than its peers…
while i'm happy about this news, i'm tired of analyst upgrades/downgrades.. it amounts to nothing more than stock manipulation.. if the sec is listening.. let these pundits send out a 'news item' to their personal portfolio of investors.. not to the entire financial market..
re: iphonerulez
I would imagine that most Apple investors are not Apple users but speculators, the ones who are only in it to make money. These are the same people who go to the stockholders meeting and try to second guess Apple's board. Even if I lost $50 a share I'd be happy to be rid of these vultures.