Fiscal 4Q '10 actual results vs. estimates

I'll have to fine tune the iPhone and iPad projections. Everything else came in a bit soft, with iPod and iTunes the weakest. On the income statement, I started with a relatively small $219m (1.1%) revenue shortfall, but made it worse at every step (most impact was from guessing GM a bit high) and it widened to $403m (7.4%) shortfall in pretax income. Fortunately this was almost all offset by a much lower tax rate than estimated, resulting in actual EPS only 9 cents short of estimated, or within 2%. Guidance for the current quarter was impressive.

Here's all the details. I've included the combined iPad+iPhone figures to highlight how those two big errors balanced out.

Deagol vs. Market... vs. Apple

Back in April I posted a couple of charts showing how my "fair value" and "target" forecasts compared to AAPL's price history over the last few years. Several readers have asked for an update, and I said I'd do one when AAPL made a credible move to catch up with its fundamentals, which is the basis for my FV and target forecasts. Seeing as AAPL has run about 80 points in 7 weeks, I was also curious to visualize how far towards a fair valuation has this recent attempt taken it.

Fiscal 4Q 2010 Final Estimates

Apple now trading at 12.7 times my FY2011 EPS (10.5x after excluding cash)

3mo ending Sep-2010   Rev($M)   EPS($)
-------------------   -------   ------
Apple guidance         18,000     3.44
Analysts consensus     18,610     3.99
Deagol estimates       20,562     4.73