Edible Apple

All eyes will be on Apple tomorrow afternoon as the company will release its earnings results from the recent holiday quarter. This earnings release will be especially important for Apple investors in light of the recent report regarding Apple’s scaling back of iPhone display orders and the corresponding drop in share price.

Recently, shares of Apple have dropped to 52-week lows, even dropping down to $485 levels for a bit before making up ground and settling in at $500 levels. That said, investors will be watching closely to see if Apple bests analyst expectations.

Last quarter, Apple issued guidance of revenue coming in at $52 billion and EPS of $11.75. Meanwhile, the consensus on Wall Street is that Apple will record revenue of $54.58 billion and EPS of $13.34. That’s nearly a $2 difference in EPS between Apple’s guidance and Wall Street expectations, and given the way analysts typically cover Apple, the company will have to really blow analysts’ already high expectations out of the water to really alleviate the mounting concerns regarding Apple’s ongoing success and profitability, no matter how off-base they may be.

As for Wall St. predictions regarding product sales, they anticipate 5 million in Mac sales, 12 million iPod sales, 50 million in iPhone sales, and 23 million iPad sales.

And for context, let’s quickly look back at Apple’s earnings report during the same quarter a year-ago. During Apple’s Q1 2012, the company posted revenue of $46.33 billion, profits of $13.06 billion and EPS of $13.87. During Q1 2011, Apple posted revenue of $26.74 billion, profit of $6 billion, and EPS of $6.43.

Product wise, Apple during Q1 2012 sold 37.04 million iPhones (representing 128% unit growth from Q1 2011), 15.43 million iPads (a 111% increase), 5.2 million Macs (a 26% increase), and 15.4 million iPods (a 21% decrease from Q1 2011).

Looking ahead to the next quarter, analysts are guiding revenue in at $46.9 billion and EPS of $12.10. They’re also expecting Mac sales of 4.2 million units, iPhone sales of 37.5 million units, iPod sales of 6 million, and 18 million units worth of iPad sales.

With the bears out in full force, Apple’s earnings release and subsequent earnings conference call may be the company’s most important in recent memory.