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 Is Once Again the World’s Most Valuable Company !

Apple keeps riding high, and it managed to regain its top spot as the world’s most valuable company. The Cupertino-based boys managed to out-Exxon the Exxon for the 1st place and we congratulate them (and their shareholders) for this major achievement. It’s much better to have a tech giant at the top than one of the companies that make Earth less livable place.

It’s interesting to note that back on August 10, 2011, Apple’s market cap was $337.17 billion, nowhere close to the new high of some $416 billion.

Apple’s market cap was around $414 billion during trading on Thursday, with the company’s stock up as high as $456.80 in the morning session. Exxon, meanwhile, saw shares slide more than 2 percent during the morning, sending its market cap to around $408 billion, following a disappointing earnings report.

The change made Apple, at least temporarily, once again the most valuable company in the world by market cap. It’s a title the company held throughout 2012, but ceded after its stock went tumbling late in the year and through the first half of 2013.

Over the last month, shares of AAPL have surged nearly $50. However, Apple is still off about $100 from the start of 2013, and remains well below its peak north of $700 reached last September.

Exxon overtook Apple’s market cap in late January of this year, amidst a continued selloff of AAPL stock. At the time, Apple was worth about $413 billion, not far from where it was as of Thursday afternoon.

After a few quarters with relatively flat growth, investors are hopeful that Apple can once again gain momentum this fall, particularly with the anticipated debuts of new iPhones and iPads. Among the products expected are a so-called “iPhone 5S,” a new low-cost iPhone, a thinner and lighter fifth-generation iPad, and a second-generation iPad mini.

Apple’s answer to the Galaxy S4: There’s iPhone, And then there’s everything else.

Reluctant to sit by the sideline, while Samsung is making home-runs with the Galaxy S4, Apple has launched a new ad campaign, highlighting the iPhone 5′s key differentiating features.

This time, Apple has chosen to make a dedicated web page rather than launching a new TV ad. That’s probably due to the fact that it wouldn’t be able to fit all the information in just 30 seconds.

But before bragging about its iPhone 5, Apple points out that it has won eight consecutive J.D. Power and Associates awards for customer satisfaction. Next, the marketing team from Cupertino goes on to saying that “has been meticulously considered and refined”

The Retina display is next on the feature list.

“Only iPhone has the Retina display.”

If Retina means a specific screen pixel density, we agree. Latest droids have higher pixel density than the iPhone’s Retina, so in a way… the iPhone 5 is the last of the flagships to have that low pixel density.

The Retina display on iPhone ushered in the era of super-high-resolution displays. Its pixel density is so high, your eye can’t distinguish individual pixels. The images and words are amazingly vivid and crisp. Everything just looks so real. In fact, once you see a Retina display, you’re never satisfied with anything less. Yet it remains a feature found only on iPhone and other Apple products.

The rest of the stuff Apple touts as best-in-class are the performance of Apple A6 chip, the iPhone 5 battery efficiency, the widespread LTE support, the user-friendliness of iOS 6 and Safari, as well as the iPhone 5′s spectacular camera. Mind you, most of these self-pats on the back are well deserved.

Apple joins HTC in attacking Samsung after the Koreans unveiled the Galaxy S4. Unlike HTC however, Apple’s approach is more positive and dare I say, mature.

The Galaxy S4 is due to hit stores by the end of April, so we’ll see if it’ll sell like hot cake, justifying the anxiety of its rivals.

See it All Here.

Apple posts record breaking financial results for Q1 2013 and Shares fall nearly 10%!

Shares of Apple  tumbled sharply in after-hours trading Wednesday after the company reported quarterly iPhone sales that just missed Wall Street estimates.

Revenue of $54.5 billion was up 18% from a year earlier but also about $230 million less than expected. Earnings of $13.81 a share were down 6 cents from a year earlier but ahead of the Street estimate of $13.44.

The company said it sold 47 million iPhones in its fiscal first quarter, up 29% from a year earlier but down slightly from Street estimates of sales of 48 million units and hopes for sales of 50 million units.

Shares were down $50.52, or 9.8%, to $463.49 at the end of after-hours trading; it had traded as low as $457.30. It will weigh on markets on Thursday. Apple hasn’t closed below $460 since Feb. 3, 2012. The stock had closed at $514.17, up $9.40, in regular trading.

With Wednesday’s close, the shares were down 26.7% from their closing high of $702.10 in September. Some analysts see the stock headed sharply lower. Jeff Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital told CNBC that the shares could hit $425.

The big question in the report was iPhone sales, which accounted for 56% of total revenue. Reports had suggested sales had not been as robust as expected, perhaps as few as 44 million sold.

Sales were better than that. In fact, those 47.8 million units sold were a record. Traders, however, had hoped for more.

There were questions about whether Apple could get the phones produced fast enough. In addition, there were worries that the smartphone market was getting saturated, thanks to new devices hitting markets worldwide. Samsung has emerged as an intense competitor.

At the same time, Apple said it sold 22.9 million iPad tablets, up nearly 48.7% from a year earlier and 34% from the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in September. But iPad Mini sales could have been much stronger except for problems getting them produced.

Meanwhile, sales of Macintosh computers were down 21.1% from a year earlier. Manufacturing constraints and cannibalization of sales by the iPad kept sales down, CEO Tim Cook said on the company’s conference call.

The iPad has also hurt sales of low-end computers that use the Microsoft  Windows operating system. Microsoft, the publisher of MSN Money, reports results after Thursday’s close.

Sales of iPod music players were off 17.5%.

Apple expects $41 billion to $43 billion in revenue in the fiscal second quarter and a gross margin of 37.5% to 38.5%. The margin, a key profitability measure, was 38.6% in the first quarter.

Apple’s board declared a cash dividend of $2.65 a share payable Feb. 14 to shareholders of record on Feb. 11. The dividend rate was unchanged.

The earnings came after what had been a decent day for stocks. The Dow Jones industrials and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index  closed at five-year highs. The Dow was up 67 points to 13,779, its best finish since Oct. 18, 2007. The S&P 500, up 2 points to 1,495, had its best close since Nov. 6, 2007.