The people "who have nothing to do with the company" are the ones who buy or sell the stock, and end up dictating what the price action would be post earnings call.

So you're technically correct, but it doesn't change the fact that the estimates done by analysts materially influence stock performance.

In the United States, the research arm of banks are explicitly forbidden from working with the investment arms. So they are not the same people.

That makes no sense

The idea is aligning profit motive of investment with profit motive of selling analysis makes it too tempting to engage in price manipulation.

Sure - but the point is that it is an indication of their sentiment, rather than anything to do with the running of the company.

I.e. it’s a reflection of their position, not Apple’s.

Somewhat, they are typically generated by the analysts whose job it is to follow the company.

However, Those analysts typically get their numbers in large part by talking to the investor relations/CFO of these companies so the estimates are usually pretty good.

Apple has declined to provide guidance for some time now.

somewhat.

They still provide some guidance on numbers both magnitude and direction, but don't release actual estimates.

I'm confused now.

You claimed to not really understand who makes these estimates and have no knowledge about how they are formed but it sounds like you do know a tiny bit about guidance?

I mean you literally asked how these estimates were created?

> I'm confused now.

Agreed.

> You claimed to not really understand who makes these estimates and have no knowledge about how they are formed but it sounds like you do know a tiny bit about guidance?

Where do you think I made this claim?

Sure, but like it or not, performance against those third-party estimates has a big impact on stock performance.

True. However this doesn’t mean as much as pre-covid when Apple did provide their own estimates.