Piper: Mac growth highest in years, margins hurt
updated 12:10 pm EDT, Thu April 24, 2008
Piper: High Mac growth
The performance of Mac sales in Apple's second quarter was the best the company has seen in years, write analysts with Piper Jaffray. The research firm notes that with a year-over-year unit growth of 51 percent, and an accompanying revenue growth of 54 percent, Macs did better in the last quarter relative to any other period in the last 17 years. Growth estimates for the second half of CY08 are expected to decline to 12 percent year-over-year, but this should not be a major problem; Mac growth is continuing to accelerate as a whole, even though it has already been strong for several quarters.
iPod sales, meanwhile, are said to be stabilizing with higher ASPs as a result of the Touch, and the iPhone should become an important factor in the second half of 2008, thanks to the 3G hardware, v2.0 firmware, and the App Store.
Like other firms, Piper is expressing concern over decreased margins at Apple, which it attributes to the cost of producing MacBook Airs. The company is said to have benefited this term from a tax rate of only 29 percent however, which helped yield a $1.16 EPS. Had Piper's belief in a 32 percent taxation come true, EPS would have shrunk to $1.11.
Computer maker
04/24, 01:10pm reply
So Apple is still a computer maker after all. That's nice to know.
lkrupp
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Joined: May 2001
margins
04/24, 03:04pm reply
Sure the margins went down slightly, but aren't they still the envy of the rest of the computer industry?
ender
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Joined: Mar 1999
up up and away
04/24, 03:27pm reply
read a story on Apple's 2Q reports yesterday, which stated that Apple was still a niche player in the computer industry. That may be true at this point but a few more years of this kind of growth and they will reach a critical mass where they are no longer a 'niche' player. I wouldn't be too happy about future prospects were I Dell or HP.
climacs
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Joined: Sep 2001
If it weren't the margins
04/24, 07:19pm reply
....it would have been guidance. Anything that's detrimental to keep Apple's stock price down for the analysts' friends and family to buy into. One day they'll decide that everything is perfect for Apple and then the stock will shoot up to the heavens. I would figure that Apple's margins are far better than RIM's. As cheap as the BlackBerrys are selling for how can they make money off of them. But no, Apple is judged by a different standard, so it gets screwed. Maybe one-trick-ponies are a better investment than a company that makes a dozen or so great products.
Constable Odo
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