Apple — one of the most widely held and closely watched public companies — reports quarterly earnings after the markets close today, and expectations are high.
The average estimates among the 35 analysts — 20 professionals, 15 amateurs — heard from so far:
- Earnings of $2.68 per share (up nearly 30% year over year) on
- Revenues of $68.7 billion (up nearly 20%).
That revenue estimate is a couple billion above the top of Apple’s guidance ($66.5 billion) and those quarterly earnings could go into the record books as the biggest in U.S. corporate history — bigger than Exxon’s $15 billion third quarter in 2008.
Only Russia’s Gazprom (Q1 2011) and Royal Dutch Shell (Q2 2008), according to Wikipedia, have earned more in single quarter.
I’ll be watching the results come in — around 4:30 p.m. ET — and eavesdropping on the 5 p.m. ET analysts call. You can too. Link: Financial results Q4 2014.
Below: The individual analyst’s estimates, with pros in blue and indies in green. I’ll run my quarterly Earnings Smackdown after the earnings call and — weather permitting — post the best and worst analyst rankings Wednesday morning.
Click to enlarge.
Thanks once again to Posts at Eventide‘s Robert Paul Leitao for pulling together the Braeburn Group numbers.
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple AAPL coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.