Apple shares have dipped along with the rest of the market over the past few days, though things certainly picked up during Monday’s session ahead of Apple’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report; shares closed at $99.76 on Monday, up 2.14%. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were on sale for just 12 days in the September quarter, but Wall Street is still expecting the launch to impact Apple’s results in a huge way. Of course, that notion obviously isn’t very far-fetched, considering Apple sold more than 10 million new iPhones just through the end of their first weekend on sale.
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The Street had huge expectations ahead of Apple’s Q4 report, with consensus earnings of $1.31 per share on $40 billion in sales. The numbers are now in and Apple crushed estimates, posting earnings of $1.42 per share on revenue totalling $42.12 billion.
Apple’s net profit for the quarter totalled $8.5 billion.
In its report for the previous quarter, Apple’s guided for revenue to come in at between $37 billion and $40 billion for the fiscal fourth quarter. Also of note, Apple posted a net profit of $7.5 billion on $37.5 billion in quarterly revenue in the fourth quarter last year.
Where Apple’s biggest moneymaker is concerned, analysts expected Apple to sell 38 million iPhone handsets in the September quarter, representing strong growth of 12.4% over the year-ago quarter. As Apple stated in Monday’s report, actual fourth-quarter iPhone sales came in at 39.3 million units, a record for the September quarter.
In the same quarter last year, Apple sold 33.8 million iPhones.
Apple also said that it sold 12.3 million iPads during the September quarter. Analysts’ consensus called for 13 million iPads in the fiscal fourth quarter this year, down from the 14.1 million iPads the company sold in the year-ago quarter.
Wall Street was looking for December-quarter revenue guidance of $63.7 billion and Apple on Monday guided for revenue between $63.5 billion and $66.5 billion for the holiday quarter.
Apple’s full press release follows below.
Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
Strong iPhone, Mac & App Store Sales Drive Record September Quarter Revenue & Earnings
CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2014 fourth quarter ended September 27, 2014. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $42.1 billion and quarterly net profit of $8.5 billion, or $1.42 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $37.5 billion and net profit of $7.5 billion, or $1.18 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 38 percent compared to 37 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 60 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple’s board of directors has declared a cash dividend of $.47 per share of the Company’s common stock. The dividend is payable on November 13, 2014, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on November 10, 2014.
“Our fiscal 2014 was one for the record books, including the biggest iPhone launch ever with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “With amazing innovations in our new iPhones, iPads and Macs, as well as iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, we are heading into the holidays with Apple’s strongest product lineup ever. We are also incredibly excited about Apple Watch and other great products and services in the pipeline for 2015.”
“Our strong business performance drove EPS growth of 20 percent and a record $13.3 billion in cash flow from operations in the September quarter,” said Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO. “We continued to execute aggressively against our capital return program, spending over $20 billion in the quarter and bringing cumulative returns to $94 billion.”
Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2015 first quarter:
• revenue between $63.5 billion and $66.5 billion
• gross margin between 37.5 percent and 38.5 percent
• operating expenses between $5.4 billion and $5.5 billion
• other income/(expense) of $325 million
• tax rate of 26.5 percent
