Apple stock plummets despite optimistic earnings call

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Wall Street isn't too happy with Apple this quarter despite strong revenue.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Apple’s stock is taking a hit after today’s Q3 2015 earnings call. At the time of writing, AAPL is down 6.72 percent in after-hours trading to 121.97. Yikes.

Apple didn’t have a terrible earnings call by any means, which you know if you followed our liveblog. In fact, Apple displayed strong revenue growth and apparently beat internal expectations.

Despite this, Apple did fail to meet Wall Street’s estimates. Additionally, Apple stood by its decision not to reveal sales numbers for the Apple Watch, which launched in April.

Apple CEO Tim Cook insists he’s withholding Apple Watch sales data because the company doesn’t want to provide actionable insight to its competitors. He did say Apple Watch sales exceeded estimates within the company, but that’s as far as he went.

It’s far from unusual to see Apple stock fall after an earnings call — in fact, quite the opposite — although Apple showed strength in many key areas. Just about everything was up from the year-ago quarter except for iPad sales, which continued to slump, falling 17.7 percent to 10.9 million.

The company earned another $49.6 billion in revenue this quarter — up 32 percent — and $10.7 billion in profit. Wall Street analysts were hoping for $50.61 billion in revenue, though.

“We had an amazing quarter, with iPhone revenue up 59 percent over last year, strong sales of Mac, all-time record revenue from services, driven by the App Store, and a great start for Apple Watch,” said Cook in a press release.

Wall Street begs to differ.

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