Apple Stomps the Street

ByDon

I made a solemn pledge to my Kibbles & Bytes partner, Emily, that I would never make her write about Apple’s financial results. That’s all mine. I was on the road last week so I missed the opportunity to talk about Apple’s great quarterly results last week so that gives me some good material for this week. Needless to say, the results blew everyone away and Apple stock hit new all time highs as Apple flirts with becoming the first $1 Trillion company. I remember when their goal was to be a $5 Billion company.

Tim Cook deserves a world of credit for moving Apple forward with innovative products and astounding financial results over the past several years. It is a continuation of the greatest story in business history. For the quarter ending on September 30, Apple posted revenue of $52.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $10.7 billion compared to revenue of $46.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $9 billion int he same quarter a year ago. This was the most revenue EVER for Apple in their 4th Quarter. The results easily beat the analyst’s estimates.

During the three months, Apple sold an astounding 46.7 million iPhones. iPad sales rose to 10.3 million units and Apple sold 5.4 million Macs, too, all up year over year. Tim Cook said of Mac sales:

Next, I’d like to talk about the Mac, which had its best year ever, with the highest annual Mac revenue in Apple’s history. It was also the best September quarter ever with Mac revenue growth of 25 percent, driven by the notebook refreshes and a strong back to school season. The Mac experience has become even better since the September launch of macOS High Sierra, with new technologies to make Mac more reliable, capable, and responsive, and lay the foundation for future innovation.?

Services and other products also showed very strong growth driven by the App store and Apple Watch with sales of $11.7 billion compared to $8,.7 billion for the previous year. For the full fiscal year, Apple generated $229.2 billion in sales with $48.4 billion in net income, up from $215.6 billion in sales and $45.7 billion in net income for fiscal 2016. Truly, remarkable results!

Apple ended the quarter boosting their cash position to $268.9 billion which, to give you some perspective is greater than the Gross National Product of countries like Indonesia, Turkey and Russia! This cash position gives Apple enormous flexibility. While most is held overseas, there is bi-partisan support for some sort of tax revision that would allow that money to be re-patriated. As an international company, however, that overseas cash is not a barrier for Apple’s continued innovation and growth. Apple also returned $11 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends.

Keep in mind that these results are without the iPhone X and the super cycle that iPhone brings. Which is one reason (the strong holiday quarter is the other) that Apple projected a very strong Q1 for FY18 with revenue of between $84 billion and $87 billion. Apple’s board of directors also declared a cash dividend of 63 cents per share of common stock, payable on Nov. 16 to shareholders of record as of close of business on Nov. 13

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