Apple’s Christmas Quarter: “The Mother of All Earnings Blowouts”?

Here’s a bit of happy news in these sad, sad times. Apple’s going to post a hell of a first quarter–“the mother of all earnings blowouts,” according to Andy Zaky over at Bullish Cross, whose track record in forecasting such things is quite a bit better than that of the experts.

When Apple (AAPL) releases its first-quarter results in January, Zaky believes the company will report earnings of $1.96 per share on sales of $11.29 billion.

That’s about $1.2 billion more revenue than most analysts are calling for.

“That would mark the largest revenue beat by any company I’ve ever seen, and will generally be an all out fantasy-like decimation of analyst consensus estimates,” Zaky writes. “Depending on where the stock price is at the time of earnings, where the consensus and whisper numbers stand going into the results, and the market’s current sentiment on equities, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 20 point move in the stock price. This is a once in a blue moon type of earnings situation that will likely be far more surprising than Google’s results last April.”

A once in a blue moon earnings situation. If that’s truly the case, then why the big discrepancy between Zaky’s numbers and consensus estimates? Zaky says the street’s been addled in the head by the econanlypse.

“It has gotten to the point of irrational bearish exuberance, that the estimates no longer reflect even a scintilla of financial reality,” he writes. “The analysts have been consistently wrong in predicting Apple’s earnings results and this time they’re going to get their ‘hats handed to them,’ as the expression goes.”

Perhaps. We’ll see in January.