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The best and worst Apple analysts: Q4 2013 edition

By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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October 29, 2013, 8:16 AM ET

Blue = Pro. Green = Indie.

FORTUNE — In the Apple (AAPL) Earnings Smackdowns we’ve been running every quarter for the past five years, the amateurs who follow the company tend to do better than Wall Street’s professionals in quarters where Apple beats expectations.

And on Monday, with Apple reporting revenues, earnings and unit sales that were all better than the Street’s consensus, the indies did it again.

Compared to some of their past disasters, the pros didn’t do badly this time. But when ranked by the accuracy of their top- and bottom-line estimates, they gave nine of the top 10 spots to the amateurs.

Shout outs to:

  • Financial Alchemist’s Turley Muller who grabbed the No. 1 spot for revenue and EPS and the No. 3 spot in the all-category rankings.
  • Stocknomics Daya Baran and Sand Hill’s Chuck Jones for nailing Apple’s EPS to the penny. That’s the second quarter in a row for Jones, who also secured the No. 1 spot in all categories this quarter.
  • RBC’s Amit Daryanani and the Braeburn Group’s Kirk Burgess for their revenue estimates of $37,475,000,000 (actual revenue: $37,472,000,000).
  • Goldman Sachs’ Bill Shope for undershooting Apple’s 33.8 million iPhone unit sales by only 65,000 units.

And a raspberry to

  • Barclays’ Ben Reitzes, who had the lowest — and the worst — estimates for revenue, EPS and iPhones.

CORRECTIONS: An earlier version of this story had a raspberry for Cantor Fitzgerald’s Brian White based on a note he filed in September. I missed his Monday morning estimates, which were far more accurate. Janney Capital’s Bill Choi most recent numbers also came to me late. The spreadsheets have been corrected and updated.  My apologies to Mr. White and Mr. Choi.

Below the fold: Our annotated master spreadsheet, with the best estimates highlighted in bright green, the second and third best in light green, the worst in red and the second and third worst in pink.

Click to enlarge.

Thanks one last time to Posts at Eventide‘s Robert Paul Leitao for pulling together the Braeburn Group numbers.

About the Author
By Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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