SALES TAKE A BITE OUT OF APPLE
Thursday sent its market value tumbling below US$1 trillion on Friday. Shares of the world’s most valuable public company fell 7.1 per cent on Friday morning after revealing stagnant iPhone sales and forecasting revenue for the holiday quarter that fell short of Wall Street expectations at the midpoint. That decline, combined with a reduction in the number of shares outstanding after accounting for repurchases during Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter, erased nearly US$90 billion in market value. A rebound in the last few minutes Friday pushed the market cap back up to US$1.002 trillion, down more than six per cent on the day. The results drew a downgrade to neutral from buy by Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Wamsi Mohan, who wrote “we are incrementally concerned ... we are likely to see further negative estimate revisions.”