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Chicago, IL – July 29, 2025 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Apple AAPL, Lenovo's LNVGY, Dell Technologies' DELL and HP HPQ
Here are highlights from Monday’s Analyst Blog:
Apple is set to report third-quarter fiscal 2025 results on July 31.
Apple expects the June-end quarter's (third-quarter fiscal 2025) revenues to grow in the low to mid-single digits on a year-over-year basis. The company expects the gross margin between 45.5% and 46.5%, including estimated tariff-impact worth $900 million.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal third-quarter revenues is pegged at $88.92 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 3.67%.
The consensus mark for earnings is pegged at $1.42 per share, up by a penny over the past 30 days. The estimate indicates a 1.43% increase from the year-ago quarter's actual.
AAPL's earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the trailing four quarters, the earnings surprise being 4.68%, on average.
Let us see how things have shaped up prior to this announcement.
Apple's fortunes are heavily reliant on the iPhone, which is by far its biggest revenue contributor. The device accounted for 49.1% of net sales in the second quarter of fiscal 2025, wherein sales increased 1.9% year over year to $46.84 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal third-quarter iPhone net sales is pegged at $40.61 billion, suggesting a 3.3% year-over-year growth.
iPhone sales have been suffering from stiff competition in China from Chinese vendors, including Huawei and Xiaomi. However, Apple has recovered some ground, per Counterpoint's latest data. Apple saw year-over-year growth of more than 8% for the period between April 1 and June 22, driven by the strong promotion of iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, as well as iPhone prices in May. It is the first time Apple has recorded growth in China since the second quarter of 2023. Huawei continued to maintain its lead with year-over-year growth of more than 12%.
China is an important market for Apple as the iPhone maker's manufacturing is primarily concentrated in the country. U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to levy tariffs on trade partners, including China, has negatively impacted Apple's supply chain. Greater China sales decreased 2.3% year over year in the fiscal second quarter.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal third-quarter China sales is pegged at $15.27 billion, suggesting 3.7% growth from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.
An expanding paid subscriber base has been a key catalyst for the Services business, which has been riding on the increasing popularity of the App Store and an expanding installed base of devices. Apple has more than 1 billion paid subscribers across its Services portfolio, offering Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, Apple Card, Apple Fitness+ and Apple One bundle.
The consensus mark for Services is pegged at $26.96 billion, suggesting 11.3% growth on a year-over-year basis.
AAPL has been gaining share in the PC market, thanks to strong demand for the latest Mac devices powered by the M4 family of chips — M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max. Apple's strong Mac portfolio helped it gain market share in the second quarter of fiscal 2025. Per IDC, Apple had a market share of 9.1%, up 110 basis points (bps) on a year-over-year basis. Shipment grew 21.4% year over year to 6.2 million. Per Gartner, Apple had a market share of 9%, up 70 bps year over year.
Apple's estimated shipment growth rate is the largest in IDC's vendor list, followed by ASUS and Lenovo's growth of 16.7% and 15.2%, respectively. Dell Technologies' shipment declined 3%, while HP saw shipment growth of 3.2%. According to Gartner's list, Lenovo was placed at the #1 spot with shipment growth of 13.9%, trailed by Apple's 13.4% and ASUS's 8.7%. Dell Technologies' shipment declined 3%, while HP saw growth of 3.2%.
The consensus mark for Mac revenues is pegged at $7.16 billion, suggesting 2.2% growth on a year-over-year basis.
Apple shares have risen 14.5% year to date (YTD), underperforming the Zacks Computer & Technology sector's return of 11%. While Apple shares have outperformed HP YTD, the shares have lagged Dell Technologies. HP shares dropped 21.3%, while Dell Technologies returned 13.9%.
The AAPL stock is not so cheap, as the Value Score of D suggests a stretched valuation at this moment.
In terms of the forward 12-month Price/Earnings, AAPL is trading at 28.23X, higher than the Zacks Computer & Technology sector's 27.86X.
Apple has been seeing better iPhone 16 sales in regions where Apple Intelligence is available. Apple expanded the availability of Apple Intelligence with iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, and macOS Sequoia 15.4 updates in new languages, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (simplified), as well as localized English for Singapore and India. At the end of 2025, Apple Intelligence will be available in eight more languages: Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (traditional) and Vietnamese.
Apple's AI push is expected to bring consumer-focused AI-enabled PCs into the market, thereby aiding its Mac shipments in the long run.
Currently, APPL carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), which implies that investors should wait for a favorable point to accumulate the stock.
You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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