Despite a slump in the company’s margins, Bear Stearns & Co. raised its investment rating of Apple Computer Inc to ‘strong buy’ from ‘buy’ following the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings report – figures, page five: analyst Andy Neff says he made the change because concern about Apple’s results was overdone; commenting on the figures, Apple says it expects to resume growth – in earnings, revenue, unit sales, and market share – in the second half of its fiscal year, saying that the fall in profit was down to pricing pressures, the costs of new product launches, and a constraint in supplies needed for manufacturing, the latter two drains being short-term; he noted that despite supply constraints, second quarter unit growth was up over 70% in its Powerbook notebook computers, while total Macintosh unit growth was up over 385; the European market continues to be slow, but sales in Japan are leading the way for continued growth of the Apple Pacific business unit; gross margin was 38.5% of net sales in the second quarter of fiscal 1993, down from 44.0% a year ago.
