Apple Sells A Record-Breaking 47.5 Million iPhones, But Is Wall Street Underwhelmed?

Apple Inc. AAPL was expected to report another record-breaking quarter, but the results may not have been what Wall Street intended.

Apple expert Sean Udall told Benzinga that he was expecting Apple to report an EPS of roughly $2. Apple's EPS came in a little lower at $1.85 but still beat the Street consensus of $1.76.

iPhone sales -- one of the most important metrics investors watch -- set a new record at 47.5 million units, but many on the Street had higher expectations. iPad sales came in at 10.9 million units, followed by Macs at 4.8 million units. Apple Watch sales remain a mystery.

"It's very solid," said Udall. "It's not the Apple-crush that people were thinking. They missed my revenue number by about a billion."

Udall expects the stock to get hit "pretty hard" but said investors still need to see the FX impact.

"I was thinking this quarter may have a little less FX instead of more," he said. "But if there's a $2 billion FX number in there, that could account for the difference."

Related Link: Apple Live Blog: Q3 Earnings Conference Call

Udall also liked Apple's guidance but admitted the quarter was "disappointing."

"I'm not sure the stock should be down $10+," he concluded. "Whenever you have people gearing up for a big beat, it's always going to punish the stock. To me, it looks like the current quarter is a little weaker than expected and the guide is better than expected."

At press time, Apple was down more than 6 percent in after-hours trading.

Mostly Satisfied?

Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said that the iPhone sales were "really, really good," but said he is looking for more information during the earnings call.

Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry didn't care that Apple was unable to beat the highest expectations.

"If you look at the numbers, they beat on the top line, bottom line and I think they guided slightly higher," Chowdhry told Benzinga. "I would say guidance was in line. All the stuff taken together seems to be, considering that Apple's stock is still inexpensive, I think it definitely beat expectations."

Chowdhry estimates that Apple sold around 2.2 million watches. He also praised Apple's ability to rise above most analyst estimates, which had gone up over the past few weeks.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.