Apple's gross margins to get slaughter in fiscal Q2... unlike the last 10 years...
http://seekingalpha.com/article/321818-apple-s-ceo-discusses-q1-2012-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=qanda
A.M. Sacconaghi - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC., Research Division
And then on my follow-up, I was wondering, I want to revisit the gross margin question. I think in each of the last 10 years, your gross margin has actually gone up from Q1 to Q2. I think the last 3 years, which is more representative of your mix, it's kind of been going up by 200 basis points. So by saying it's going to go down 270 basis points, that's kind of bucking normal seasonality by 400 to 500 basis points, sounds like the onetime items is about 50 basis points. Is the loss of leverage that significant? Or what am I missing?
Peter Oppenheimer
The factors that are -- Tony, that are going to affect our sequential decline are primarily 3. They are the loss of leverage from the revenue, so we reported $46.3 billion this quarter, which included a 14th week. We see our revenues being $32.5 billion next quarter. So against our fixed cost that will have a significant impact. We did have some onetime items in the December quarter which won't recur, and the dollar is much stronger. So those are the principal 3 reasons. I would also say that 44.7 is a high, high, higher than we have seen since I've been with Apple in 15 years. And it's hard to compare this year versus last because we're in different commodity cycles and different currency levels and where we are with our product cycles as well. Last year, we did have a sequential increase in iPhones, and that was a big contributor to our going up sequentially. We don't see that reoccurring this year, especially from the high of $44.7 billion. |
