Apple is expected to report a year-over-year decline in both profit and sales when it hands down its fiscal third quarter 2023 ended in June after the market close on Thursday, August 3.
Wall Street analysts, on average, expect the iPhone maker to report a 0.8% drop in earnings per share from $1.20 in the year-ago quarter to $1.19, according to Zacks Consensus Estimate.
Revenue is forecast to decline 2% from record 3Q revenue of $82.96 billion in 2022 to $81.26 billion.
However, analysts at Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) are confident the iPhone maker can deliver an earnings beat.
In a note to clients ahead of Apple's earnings report, the analysts wrote that they expect the company to post earnings per share of $1.21 for 3Q, $0.02 above the consensus.
They expect this beat to be driven by the better-than-expected performance of Apple’s Services segment, projecting Services revenue of $21.8 billion ahead of the $20.7 billion consensus estimate per FactSet. This would represent an 11% jump over the year-ago quarter.
“Upside to our Services forecast reflects the inflection in App Store spending, per Sensor Tower, strong growth in advertising, continued content investments in AppleTV, and a more benign forex headwind relative to company guidance of negative 400 bps," the analysts wrote.
Mac revenue is also seen as significantly higher than the consensus of $6.3 billion at $9.4 billion due to an easier comparison and recent third-party data that showed Mac sales rose 10% year-over-year.
Apple shares traded at US$192.76 on Wednesday afternoon ahead of its results and are up 54.1% so far in 2023.
- Updated with share price movement -
Contact the author at emily.jarvie@proactiveinvestors.com
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