Apple a few moments ago issued its earnings report for the March quarter and posted revenue of $58 billion, a quarterly profit of nearly $11.6 billion, and EPS of $2.46. Leading up to today’s earnings report, analysts on Wall Street were anticipating revenue to fall somewhere in the $57 billion range and EPS to fall around $2.36.
As a point of contrast, Apple during the same quarter last year posted revenue of $61.1 billion and EPS of $2.73. So while revenue did drop year-over-year, that isn’t entirely unexpected given Apple’s cautionary note to investors earlier this year regarding slower demand for new iPhone models than initially expected.
Over the past few years, quarterly iPhone sales remained the key metric analysts and investors focused on when evaluating the vibrancy of Apple’s business. Apple, though, no longer releases unit sales for the iPhone, the Mac, and the iPad.
Explaining the rationale behind this decision — which was first announced last November — Apple’s Luca Maestri during an earnings conference call last year explained that the “number of units sold in a quarter is not representative of underlying state of business.”
“Our March quarter results show the continued strength of our installed base of over 1.4 billion active devices, as we set an all-time record for Services, and the strong momentum of our Wearables, Home and Accessories category, which set a new March quarter record,” Tim Cook said in a press release.
“We delivered our strongest iPad growth in six years,” Cook added, “and we are as excited as ever about our pipeline of innovative hardware, software and services.”
Apple also relayed that it’s increasing its quarterly dividend by 5% to $0.77 per share. Shares of Apple are up more than 4% in after-hours trading as Apple’s guidance for the next quarter was higher than investors were anticipating.
Some notable tidbits from the earnings conference call include the fact that Apple’s Wearables business is now the size of a Fortune 200 company. Meanwhile, iPad revenue jumped by more than 20% year-over-year. Revenue from Services checked in at $11.5 billion, setting an all-time quarterly record in the process.
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