Trading for Apple stock halted briefly on Wednesday afternoon as Tim Cook issued a letter providing revised guidance for the company’s first-quarter 2019 earnings estimates. The new estimates are as follows:
- Revenue of approximately $84 billion
- Gross margin of approximately 38 percent
- Operating expenses of approximately $8.7 billion
- Other income/(expense) of approximately $550 million
- Tax rate of approximately 16.5 percent before discrete items
Most of the numbers are not very different from the guidance the company issued back in November, but there is one big change—revenue is projected to be down about $5-9B from the company’s previous $89-93B estimate.
