Summary:

• Apple set to release Q4 results after market close tonight
• EPS forecast to be $1.87. Revenue $50.7B
• Shares pulls back after hitting all-time high on Wednesday

 There have been some notable moves in US stocks in the past week with earnings releases seeing a significant impact on shares of Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook and Tesla. Tonight, the biggest publicly traded US company of them all will provide a trading update with Apple set to post their Q4 results shortly after the closing bell. 

Consensus forecasts from a  variety of sources are shown below:

• Q4 adjusted EPS: $1.87 expected by a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate.
• Q4 revenue: $50.7 billion expected by Thomson Reuters.
• Q4 iPhone unit sales: 46 million expected by a FactSet consensus estimate.
• Q1 revenue forecast: $84.9 billion expected by Thomson Reuters.
• Q1 margin forecast: 38.6 percent expected by a StreetAccount estimate.

Heading into the release shares in Apple have pulled back a little after making an all-time high of 169 just yesterday. The latest push higher came on the back of Amazon’s strong results last Thursday which had a positive impact on several of the big tech names with investors seemingly believing that a beat for Amazon was a positive sign for others. 

Apple trades not far from its record high of 169 going into the earnings release. Source: xStation

Not only is Apple’s stock sensitive to the latest earnings release but due to the size of the firm the broader US indices can be susceptible to moves. Apple has a weighting of just under 4% for the US500 and a share of more than 12% of the US100 and therefore any sizable moves in Apple may be seen in these indices. As a rough guide when Amazon reported their earnings after the market close last Thursday the surge higher in the stock was clearly seen in the US100. For comparison purposes Amazon has a weighting of around 7% of the US100. 

 The US100 showed a marked move higher following the Amazon earnings release. Source: xStation