Apple Inc (AAPL)

[langostino]

"25% is the next year earnings growth"


FY'08 Consensus EPS => $5.22
FY'09 Consensus EPS => $6.00
Consensus earnings growth Y/Y => 14.9%

FY'09 consensus is falling. Because analysts update their forecasts periodically, they tend to trail the trend. Which is why in good times they have to keep raising their estimates, and in bad times they have to keep cutting them. In other words, it's a near certainty that the FY'09 number is, at the moment, greater than the actual estimates if you could poll the analysts today, and that even if you had the truly current consensus estimate, it would would likely be too high.

Big picture, macro, the growth rate in earnings Apple has enjoyed over the past several years is unsustainable: chief among the reasons is that it's not possible to reproduce the 10-fold increase in operating margin (from 3% to 30%), which enabled earnings to grow dramatically faster than top-line. Bottom line, AAPL isn't going to be able to command the same PE multiple. This is nothing new for anyone who's been reading this Board and keeping up the company though.