Apple stock crosses $600 per share for the first time since 2012!

Investors are liking Apple’s direction lately, pushing the stock to $600 per share for the first time since 2012. Shares of AAPL closed at $600.96 each on Monday, a nice hike up from the under $400 price the stock was sitting at in April 2013.

Apple’s shares were up more than $8 for the day to reach the 52 week high, bringing the Cupertino-based company’s market capitalization to a hefty $517.65 billion.

It’s not new products that have pushed Apple’s stock higher – we haven’t seen the promised new product category yet – but rather continued successful quarterly performance, an increased stock buyback, and a 7-for-1 stock split that is set to take place in June.

“We’re confident in Apple’s future and see tremendous value in Apple’s stock, so we’re continuing to allocate the majority of our program to share repurchases,” Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said in April on the company’s latest earnings call. ”We’re also happy to be increasing our dividend for the second time in less than two years.”

The increased buyback was announced in April, when Apple detailed it has raised its share repurchase authorization to $90 billion from the $60 billion level announced last year. Apple expects to utilize a total of over $130 billion of cash under the expanded program by the end of calendar 2015.

The seven-for-one stock split also impressed investors, as each Apple shareholder of record at the close of business on June 2, 2014 will receive six additional shares for every share held on the record date, and trading will begin on a split-adjusted basis on June 9.

Apple’s all-time high was reached in September 2012 when shares crossed $700 for a short period, before tumbling back down.

Apple Q2 2014 earnings: 43.7M iPhones, 16.3M iPads, $45.6B revenue!

As expected, Apple is out with its financial report for Q2 2014 this afternoon. In a press release issued just a few moments ago, Apple announced that it sold 43.7 million iPhones, 16.3 million iPads, and pulled in $45.6 billion in revenue during its fiscal Q2.

Other than iPad sales, Apple beat the Street estimates by a wide margin. The Cupertino company also announced an accelerated strategy for its stock buyback plans, adding an additional $30 billion to the pot (for a total of $90 billion), as well as a 7-1 stock split…

Here is the full breakdown of Apple’s Q2 earnings:

• iPhones: 43.7 million versus 37.7 million expected
• iPads: 16.35 million versus 19.7 million units expected
• Macs: 4.1 million versus 4.03 million expected
• iPods: 2.76 million versus 2.99 million expected
• Revenue: $45.6 billion versus $43.6 billion expected

And here are some comments from CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer:

“We’re very proud of our quarterly results, especially our strong iPhone sales and record revenue from services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re eagerly looking forward to introducing more new products and services that only Apple could bring to market.”

“We generated $13.5 billion in cash flow from operations and returned almost $21 billion in cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases during the March quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “That brings cumulative payments under our capital return program to $66 billion.” 

 

The last time Apple split its stock was back in 2005. Shareholders will receive six additional shares for each share they hold and the share price will drop to around $80. The company also increased the dividend by 8% per share, and says it plans to do so yearly.

Apple Q1 2014 earnings: 51M iPhones, 26M iPads, $57.6B revenue!

As expected, Apple is out with its financial report for Q1 2014 this afternoon. It’s an important one, as it follows a number of product releases in the late fall of last year, and then of course the holiday season, where the company typically posts huge numbers.

And it continues that tradition today. In a press release issued just a few moments ago, Apple announced that it sold 51 million iPhones, 26 million iPads, and pulled in $57.6 billion in revenue during its fiscal Q1—all record-breaking for the Cupertino firm…

Here is the full breakdown:

• Revenue: $57.6 billion
• iPhone units: 51 million
  
• iPad units: 26 million
  
• Mac units: 4.8 million

And here are some comments from CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer:

“We are really happy with our record iPhone and iPad sales, the strong performance of our Mac products and the continued growth of iTunes, Software and Services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We love having the most satisfied, loyal and engaged customers, and are continuing to invest heavily in our future to make their experiences with our products and services even better.”

“We generated $22.7 billion in cash flow from operations and returned an additional $7.7 billion in cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases during the December quarter, bringing cumulative payments under our capital return program to over $43 billion,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.”

 

Apple may have sold record 55 million iPhones last quarter!

Morgan Stanley analyst, Katy Huberty predicts that 54-55 million iPhones have been sold in Q4 2013. If this is the case, then the iPhone could have very well had a record quarter.

The consensus on Wall Street is that Apple was able to move 53 million units of their popular smartphone; a slightly lower, but still overwhelmingly impressive number.

Q4 sales for electronics and smartphones are notoriously profitable for manufacturers due to the Holiday season. So it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise when it dips below the 55 million mark significantly in Q1 2014.

What are the predictions for 2014? Huberty sees 45 million iPhones sold through the end of March, and then 35 million until the end of June. This is only because iPhone buyers typically hold off on a new purchase in anticipation of the latest iPhone’s release. In this case, the iPhone 6. But the latest smartphone from Apple isn’t the only thing that the Cupertino-based tech giant has up their sleeve.

Huberty believes that there will be other services and products from Apple to look out for:

“We believe Apple is likely to launch new Internet-based services this year, including the potential for a mobile payments platform as early as the developer conference in June, in our view. Most importantly, we believe Apple will start to monetize services on top of the many assets they have, such as iBeacon, fingerprint sensor, 575M+ credit card accounts, and homogeneous iOS installed base. iWatch or a larger iPad form factor would also push consensus estimates higher.”

The Morgan Stanley analyst also predicts that Apple’s revenue could soar as high as $58 billion. We’ll know for sure on the 27th of this month, when Apple will release their latest quarterly results.

Apple widens U.S. lead over Samsung, makes ground on Google!

Research firm comScore reported Thursday that a survey of of the United States market for smartphones during the month of February 2013 has revealed Apple’s iPhone widening its lead over second-ranked Samsung, which went up one percentage point to grab a 21.3 percent share of US-owned smartphones during the three month average period ending February 2013. In other words and in another data point proving Apple doomsayers need to re-run their spreadsheets!

During the same timeframe, Apple’s has gone up from 35.9 percent in November 2012 to 38.9 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers in February 2013, an increase of 3.9 percentage points. The good news doesn’t stop here: Apple’s iOS mobile operating system which powers all iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices, increased 3.9 percentage points to 38.9 percent, matching Apple’s aforementioned smartphone devices share.

Google’s Android platform, available on numerous devices from dozens of manufacturers, still ranked as the top smartphone platform with a healthy 51.7 percent market share in February 2013, but it dropped two percentage points from 53.7 percent market share in November 2012…

Per comScore data, BlackBerry ranked third with 5.4 percent in mobile OS share while Microsoft (3.2 percent) and Symbian (0.5 percent) continue to be rounding errors.

According to independent analyst Horace Dediu, the numbers don’t mean people are abandoning Android. “To be clear, Android is not losing users, but they are gaining far fewer than iOS,” he wrote on Twitter.

In terms of top smartphone vendors, in addition to the #1 Apple (38.9 percent) and #2 Samsung (21.3 percent), HTC came in third with a single-digit share of 9.3 percent, while Google-owned Motorola and LG rounded up the top five list with their respective 8.4 percent and 6.8 percent share.

All told, researchers estimate that the United States had some 133.7 million smartphone owners. Growth, however, is notably slowing and was pegged at an estimated eight percent compared to comScore’s November 2012 data.

The smartphone industry appears to be saturated elsewhere as well, with today’s news of France Telecom complaining about a slowdown European carriers are feeling over belt-tightening amid the continued fragility of the economy there.

CEO Stephane Richard, who runs France Telecom, warns “there are fewer early adopters”so selling a phone for $600 is “getting more and more difficult.”

“Customers are more focused on price,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek. “Except for a few hundred thousand people who will buy the latest iPhone – except for that category of people – the majority of the market will be difficult.”

US smartphone penetration rate chart via Asymco.

comScore data highlights his point: the U.S. smartphone market is obviously peaking with a 57 percent mobile market penetration, although we’re obviously still far from the saturation point as the remaining 43 percent non-smartphone owners upgrade to their first smart device.