Apple just posted its earnings report for the December quarter and the company appears to be back on track. Revenue wise, Apple posted $78.4 billion in revenue, a quarterly profit of $17.89 billion and EPS of $3.36. As a point of comparison, Apple during the same quarter a year-ago posted revenue of $75.9 billion and EPS of $3.28.
Funny enough, for all the armchair pundits and professional analysts who have been so eager to proclaim Apple’s demise, Apple last quarter set a new quarterly record for both revenue and EPS.
Incidentally, analysts were anticipating Apple to deliver revenue of $77.4 billion and EPS of $3.23. In other words, Apple completely smashed analyst expectations this past quarter.
“We’re thrilled to report that our holiday quarter results generated Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever, and broke multiple records along the way,” Tim Cook said in a press release. “We sold more iPhones than ever before and set all-time revenue records for iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch. Revenue from Services grew strongly over last year, led by record customer activity on the App Store, and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.”
Of course, the major barometer by which most every analyst measures Apple’s health continues to be iPhone sales. In this regard, Apple’s most recent earnings report finally gives investors something to cheer about. Following up on back to back quarters where iPhone growth took a dip, Apple sold 78.3 million iPhones last quarter, marking a slight uptick from last year’s holiday quarter where the company sold 74.7 million units. Analysts, meanwhile, were projecting iPhone sales for the quarter to come in at 78 million units.
As for other products in Apple’s lineup, iPad and Mac sales checked in at 13.1 million and 5.37 million units, respectively. This compares to 16.1 million iPad sales and 5.31 Mac sales in the year-ago quarter. All told, iPad sales fell 22% while Mac sales rose by a modest 7%.
Apple’s Services division, meanwhile, generated revenue of $7.17 billion, representing a solid 18% increase year over year.
Now if you’re curious what this all means for the day-trader who said he was risking his last $250,000 on shares of Apple crashing, it appears that the entire bit was nothing more than an elaborate and clever troll job.
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