Apple shares fall to one-year low on key supplier’s weak outlook

Apple shares fell to the lowest price in more than a year after its audio-chip supplier, Cirrus Logic, predicted sales that missed estimates because of unsold inventory.

Apple’s shares declined 4.3 per cent to $407.80 this morning in New York, and earlier touched $403.67, the lowest intraday price since December 2011. Cirrus reported preliminary fiscal first-quarter net revenue of as much as $170 million, less than analysts’s average $197.3 million estimate.

"We blame Apple for losing its mobility mojo," Vernon Essi, Jr, an analyst at Needham and Co, wrote in a report. "This was simply an inventory overbuild for the iPhone 5 relative to Apple's forecast."

Cirrus will record a net inventory reserve of $23.3 million for the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in March.

Most of that is from a high-volume product from one customer, Cirrus said.

Apple accounts for more than 90 per cent of Cirrus’s revenue, according to supply chain estimates compiled by Bloomberg.