I am running out of verbs to describe Apple’s quarter-after-quarter record revenue and earnings. Apple is already the most valuable company on the planet and for the 3 months ending on December 27, 2014, Apple made more money than any publicly-traded company, EVER. Before the earnings report came out, analysts were scrambling to raise their estimates but even the most optimistic analyst did not predict the monster quarter that Apple posted. Apple had a record quarterly revenue of $74.6 Billion and a record $18 billion, or $3.06 per diluted share, of profit.
This historical financial result was driven by the wild success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus with about 74.5 million units sold. To put that in perspective, this is 46% greater than the 51 million sold last holiday quarter. They also sold over 21 million iPads and had 14% growth in Mac sales while the rest of the PC market was shrinking.
Apple is not resting on their laurels, though! They spent a record $1.9 Billion on R&D which is a 42% increase and of course, there is the Apple Watch coming in April, which Tim Cook says he uses everyday and cannot live without. That’s a big endorsement!
So just how big was this? Apple sold over 34,000 iPhones every hour, 24 hours a day for every day of the quarter. That is 575 iPhones a minute. They ended the quarter with $179 billion in cash on hand. Apple’s revenues were greater than Microsoft, IBM and Proctor & Gamble combined. Apple’s revenue was greater that the GDP of 125 countries in 2013 as listed by the World Bank.
ApplePay was also a hit during the quarter with the contact-less payment system accounting for two of every three dollars in mobile payments. Tim Cook, Apple CEO said:
We are more confident than ever that 2015 will be the year of Apple Pay.
The number of banks and institutions accepting Apple Pay is rapidly increasing and it was revealed that at Panera Bread, for example, 80% of contact-less payments are Apple Pay. Apple also announced that 200,000 self-service stations, including vending machines, parking meters, etc. have launched Apple Pay.
Apple predicted that the first calendar quarter would also be strong with revenue between $52 and $55 billion. Apple’s board of directors declared a cash dividend of 47 cents per share.
Whenever I see Apple post another record quarter like this I do think back to the days before Steve Jobs came back to the company where Apple’s obituary was on every analyst’s lips, when Michael Dell suggested liquidating the company, and when at a pep talk for Apple resellers an Apple executive set the goal of Apple becoming a $5 billion company. This is clearly the most amazing American business success story and the chapters are still being written. We are very proud to be a part of this story and send our congratulations to the entire Apple team for an awesome job well done. Keep up the good work and keep on making more of the most innovative, intuitive and useful products on the planet!