With earnings season in full swing, Apple today released its earnings results for the recent September quarter, and all in all, Tim Cook and co. have reason to smile. When the dust settled, Apple posted revenue of $52.6 billion. Earnings per share, meanwhile, checked in at $2.07. Ahead of Apple’s earnings report, analysts on Wall St. were anticipating revenue to come in at $50.7 billion and EPS to check in at $1.87.
As a point of interest, Apple during the same quarter a year-ago posted revenue of $46.9 billion, a net quarterly profit of $9 billion, and EPS of $1.67.
“We’re happy to report a very strong finish to a great fiscal 2017, with record fourth quarter revenue, year-over-year growth for all our product categories, and our best quarter ever for Services,” Tim Cook said in a press release.”
Now seeing as how the iPhone has long been Apple’s primary revenue driver, it’s no surprise that quarterly iPhone sales is the metric analysts typically pay most attention to. That said, Apple during the recent September quarter managed to sell 46.6 million iPhones. During the September quarter last year, Apple sold 45.5 million iPhones. While that only represents a 2% increase year-over-year, Apple’s other products more than picked up the slack.
During its most recent quarter, Apple sold 10.3 million iPads and 5.3 million Macs, representing a year-over-year increase of 14% and 25%, respectively. Revenue from Apple’s suite of services, meanwhile, came in at $8.5 billion, a solid 34% increase from the year-ago quarter.
All told, it was a solid quarter for Apple ahead of tomorrow’s iPhone X launch.
“Apple’s year-over-year revenue growth rate accelerated for the fourth consecutive quarter and drove EPS growth of 24 percent in the September quarter,” Apple’s CFO Luca Maestri added. “We also generated strong operating cash flow of $15.7 billion and returned $11 billion to investors through our capital return program.”
Apple’s cash hoard now stands at $268.9 billion. In after-hours trading, shares of Apple are up a tad more than 3%.
