One More Note Ahead of Apple Earnings

Show Evercore Analyst Amit Daryanani the Money!

28 APRIL 2022 - Pencils down, people - time for one more note from the financial front ahead of today’s March-quarter earnings report from Apple. Today’s theme: Returning capital to investors. Apple 3.0 ran part of a note from Evercore analyst Amit Daryanani. 

Despite supply constraints and manufacturing shutdowns in China, AD-Rock thinks Apple will deliver another quarter of growth. Now show him the money. According to his note:

Apple typically provides a capital allocation update during the Mar-qtr earnings report and we expect them to increase both the buyback authorization and the quarterly dividend. The dividend will likely increase by 6-7% (+7% in Mar-21) and we expect at least $90B in additional buyback authorization (up $90B in Mar-21).

Growth for iPhone? That’s fine. New products on the horizon? Whatever! “Capital returns remain central to the Apple bull thesis,” according to Daryanani, “so a better than expected authorization could contribute to some post-earnings upside.” 

Daryanani has an “Outperform” rating on Apple shares. His price target on the shears is $210.

Waiting on a Call

And now we simply count down the hours. Apple’s 2Q FY2022 earnings report and associated call are set for this afternoon. Earnings for the March-quarter will hit Apple’s site after the closing bell at 1:30 Pacific/4:30 Eastern. The the call between Apple CEO Tim Cook, CFO Luca Maestri, and a slew of financial analysts is set for 2PM/5PM. You can catch the call live on Apple’s Investor site. It’ll also be available to replay there for a couple of weeks. Apple will also make the call available as a podcast soon after, though that’ll also only be available for a couple of weeks. And - of course - we’ll do our best to recap what we can here, after the call.