Apple Continues Its Remarkable Run

Apple released it’s fourth quarter results on Wednesday, October 18. Once again Apple dramatically exceeded Wall Street’s expectations. Wall Street was expecting earnings of $4.67 billion, or $.51 cents per share. Apple delivered earnings of $4.84 billion and a quarterly profit of $546 million, equal to $.62 per share. This was a 27% profit increase from the year-ago quarter. Strong sales of Macs (especially laptops), and continued iPod and iTunes Store strength contributed to this success.

As they say on Marketplace, here are the numbers:

• 58% of company revenue came from Macs (that is, computers, not iPods or iTunes Store sales)

• 4% rise in desktop sales

• 61% of Apple computers sold were laptops

• 56% increase in portable sales from year ago quarter

• 1,610,000 Macs sold this quarter

• 5.3 million Macs sold this year

• 8,729,000 iPods this quarter

• 39 million iPods sold this year

• $4.84 billion revenue

• $546 million quarterly profit

• 27% increase in profit compared to a year-ago

• $11 billion increase in annual revenue over past two years

• $10 billion in cash on hand

• 32% increase in Mac sales in Europe

• 4% decrease in Mac shipments in Japan, though iPod sales grew 28 percent in revenue from the year-ago quarter).

• iPod sales increased 35% in Europe from the year ago quarter (though the purchase price decreased.)

• 40% of the quarter’s revenue came from international sales

• Apple expects revenue of $6.0 to $6.2 billion in the first fiscal quarter of 2007

• Gross margin was 29.2%, from 28.1 percent in the year ago quarter.

I wonder when Apple is going to spend or distribute some of that $10 billion in cash. That’s about half of Vermont’s entire gross state product. There are a lot of potential acquisitions out there. However, despite recent high-profile acquisitions (Silicon Color, Shake, eMagic) Apple is not known as an acquisitions-driven company.

For owners of AAPL (like me), Apple could post a dividend or buy back some shares.

Or Apple could give me a $10 billion grant as a sort of friendly gesture. You know, just between friends.