Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL), the world’s largest company by market value, reports fiscal second-quarter earnings after the close of U.S. markets Monday with analysts expecting per share earnings of $2.16 on revenue of $56.1 billion.
Should the reported numbers be close to or in-line with those estimates, Apple’s second-quarter results will lag the $3.06 per share on sales of $74.6 billion reported in the fiscal first quarter, turning investors’ attention to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus sales, Apple Watch comments and the company’s plans to return capital shareholders.
Apple reinstituted its dividend in the third quarter of 2012 after a 17-year hiatus. Since reintroducing the payout at 37.8 cents per share per quarter, Apple’s dividend has grown at an impressive clip to 47 cents a share per quarter. [Dividend ETFs Wait on Apple Boost]
It is not a stretch to say few companies’ earnings reports are as closely monitored and scrutinized as Apple’s, but even with the fervor leading up to the iPad maker’s latest batch of quarterly results, investors have been shying away from exchange traded funds with hefty allocations to the stock.
Even with the Nasdaq Composite and the PowerShares QQQ (NasdaqGM: QQQ), the Nasdaq-100 (NDQ) tracking ETF hitting all-time highs last Friday and Apple just pennies away from accomplishing the same feat, ETFs with the largest allocations to Apple are losing assets this month. [Missing the Mark on Nasdaq ETFs]
The $13 billion Technology Select Sector SPDR (NYSEArca: XLK) and the $2.9 billion iShares U.S. Technology ETF (NYSEArca: IYW) came into Monday with Apple weights of 18.1% and 20.8%, respectively. In the case of XLK, the ETF’s Apple weight is more than double its allocation to Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT), the fund’s second-largest holding. IYW’s weight to Apple is more than double its Microsoft weight.
Over the past 90 days, those two ETFs are each up more than 7%, but that has not prevented investors from pulling a combined $407 million from those funds this month.
XLK and IYW are not the only Apple ETFs that have been recently bleeding assets. TheVanguard Information Technology ETF (NYSEArca: VGT), which had a 16.8% Apple weight at the end of March, has seen April outflows of almost $44.1 million. VGT is up 7.8% over the past 90 days.
This is not the first time flows data has suggested ETF investors are missing out on Apple’s rally and broader tech sector strength. As highlighted by the roughly $14 billion that has been pulled from QQQ since the start of last year and outflows from the aforementioned tech sector ETFs since the start of this year, investors have not been lured to Apple ETFs simply because those funds feature large weights to that beloved stock. [Apple’s Rise Doesn’t Lure Investors to Apple ETFs]
Up 8.4% over the past three months, QQQ has a 14.4% weight to Apple, nearly double its 7.5% weight to Microsoft.
Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund
Tom Lydon’s clients own shares of Apple and QQQ.