Bloggers Goof Big Time on Apple’s Quarterly Financial Picture

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Credit: epicharmus/Flickr
Credit: epicharmus/Flickr

The day after Apple wows Wall Street with over-the-top quarterly revenue numbers is often followed by reports bloggers beat the pants off professional prognosticators. Not this time. The usually-bullish bloggers took a dive, missing Apple’s fourth quarter financials by an average of 23 percent.


The best-performing amateur analyst was Alexis Cabot of the Apple Finance Board. Cabot missed the revenue and earnings per share mark by 11.6 percent. The worst-performance came from Robert Paul, of Posts at Eventide. Paul described the goof-up similar to kicking a penalty shot in the wrong direction during a soccer match broadcast worldwide.

The blogger’s failure ends a six-quarter stretch of wins for the independent analysts. The bloggers benefited from riding Apple’s long-running iPhone sales gains. Pros appeared to do better at gauging Apple’s fourth-quarter report, missing the mark just 5.8 percent of the time.

William Power of Baird topped the institutional analyst, arriving at revenue figures that were just 1.7 percent of the final numbers announced Tuesday. At the bottom was Brian White of Ticonderoga, who goofed by 10.3 percent.

How will the pro and am analyst do for the first quarter of 2012? Apple already has issued guidance for $37 billion in revenue.

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