Apple beat on both the top and bottom lines in its first earnings report since announcing a CEO transition earlier this month.
The shakeup at the top of history’s greatest consumer products company arguably overshadowed Thursday’s financial results, but for what it’s worth — and if we’re talking numbers, it’s worth a lot — Apple had its best March quarter ever.
Overall sales were $111.2 billion, up nearly 17% from the same period a year ago.
As the figure shows, that was the briskest annual revenue growth since the September quarter of 2021.
Following what the company described as “unprecedented” demand for iPhones during the holiday quarter, iPhone sales actually missed in Thursday’s results, although just barely. $56.99 billion was just shy of the $57.10 billion consensus.
Tim Cook, who’ll assume the role of executive chairman in September, said demand for the newest phones remains “extraordinary.”
Notably, Greater China sales grew 28%. That’s a solid encore from the prior quarter, when they leapt 38% on robust iPhones sales. It’s fair to say the worst fears about Apple’s future in the Chinese consumer market have been dispelled.
Both Mac and iPad revenue beat ($8.39 billion against $8.02 billion seen, and $6.91 billion versus $6.66 billion expected, respectively), as did Wearables. Services revenue of almost $31 billion easily topped estimates. Every geographic segment saw double-digit growth, Cook remarked.
There was some concern headed in that Apple’s at risk of margin compression as memory costs soar. Like last quarter, the company appeared to navigate the situation well. Margin beat by 90bps and net income rose 19.4%.
CFO Kevan Parekh touted new March-quarter records for operating cash flow and earnings. EPS of $2.01 beat by a nickel.
Apple also raised its dividend and said the board authorized an additional $100 billion buyback program.
Regardless of how the market trades the numbers, I see no utility in nitpicking these results. They were strong. Apple is, and has been for quite a long time, the best-run company on the planet.
Later, on the call, Apple said revenue will likely rise between 14% and 17% during the current quarter. Even at the low-end, that’d be 5ppt better than consensus.
Wait! How can this be? Everyone” says they have missed AI so consumers will not buy their offerings!
But that’s not the only AI-related takeaway from the results. There’s another nugget buried in the results which should rattle AI true believers.
https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/article/apple-is-facing-mac-mini-supply-constraints-as-ai-and-openclaw-developers-buy-up-tiny-desktops-221232805.html
I’ve seen Openclaw referenced quite a bit, most recently as a potential data security threat. To the point that some firms have banned its use on their corporate networks. But even though I have never used it nor fully understand it, it sounds mighty useful and cool. And more to the point for all of us money grubbing investors, it sounds like another example of how smaller can work as well as the larger offerings from our major LLM incumbents.
First the way more efficient Chinese models and now this. Will we really need so many datacenters going forward?
Apple is not taking on the debt and at a certain point they may very well reap the benefits.
Agreed poetic one.
Apple stock is as close as I have ever/will ever come to owning an actual bond. 🙂