Richard, I have a problem with looking at valuation based on trailing figures. I do not think that is how Wall Street values stocks. The street is a forward-looking mechanism. They don't care what happened yesterday. They care about what is happening tomorrow. If CPQ was valued on a trailing basis, the stock would be practically worthless right now (a 25 multiple gives CPQ a $12 stock price). They value CPQ at $36 because they think the company will do better _in the future_.
As for the EPS figures. . .
I'll say in advance that some of these figures come from Eric Yang's estimates from his AAPL Investors website. Others come from 10-Q forms and data from conference calls.
Part 1:
I'm not so sure about .50 for the current quarter.
Powerbook sales are going to be slow, but they were slow last quarter as well. The figures bandied about for iMac sales are growing increasingly impressive, however. You could take or leave the 400,000 figure one analyst was quoted as coming from an Apple source. However, it falls surprisingly in line with the figure from Macintouch, which stated that manufacturing capability has gotten up to 56,000 per week. 56,000 x 6 weeks + 56,000 initial = 392,000.
iMac sales = 392,000 x $1050 AUP
The conference call from last quarter stated that All-in-one G3's made up 20% of unit sales or 120,000 total.
If we keep that constant, then we have
AIO sales = 120,000 x $1400 AUP
Powerbook sales were 103,000 last quarter. As bad as this quarter may be, an increase is more likely than a decrease (remember, last quarter people were freaking out because all the pre-G3 powerbooks had been cleared from inventory and the G3's were impossible to get).
Powerbook sales = 120,000 x $2800 AUP
G3 sales last quarter were 330,000 units. This quarter, although boosted by price drops, will be hurt by production. Assume a moderate drop.
G3 sales = 300,000 x $1,600 AUP
Eric Yang estimates in a July entry on AAPL Investors for "other" revenue from the quarter to be 240 million. Presumably "other" refers to software sales and leftovers like the eMate. Eric, perhaps you could explain this category.
Add that together, and we get:
$1,640 million revenue.
Last quarter's margin was 25.7%. We can expect this quarter's to drop, perhaps to Q2's level of 24.8% given lowered prices and iMac sales.
We'll bump costs up a little from $292 million to $310 million (higher than both Q2 and Q3).
Using constants for all other factors, we come to a diluted EPS of
$0.67
The assumptions:
-400,000 iMac sales in accordance with Macintouch/other sources
-constant AIO sales
-mild increase of Powerbook sales from last quarter
-10% decrease in G3 desktop shipments
-Lowered margin to 24.8% due to iMacs, price cutting.
-Increased costs to 310 million (6% increase Q-Q)
Total units shipped, BTW, would come in at: 940,000. Which brings about another assumption--that Apple is capable of manufacturing that many units in a quarter. At first one may doubt that, but remember that facilities are being run 24/7 to make iMacs--a phenomenon that certainly didn't happen in previous quarters.
I'll post about X-Mas sales and Q1 in the near future.
Andrew |
