Not slowing down apparently.
So Apple just posted some really great numbers for the last quarter.
The company posted a record $13.1b profit on a record $54.5b in revenue, compared to last year’s record of $13.06b profit on $46.33b in revenue.
The quarter before this, they made $8.2b profit on $36 billion in revenue.
Some important stats:
- iPhone sales were a record 47.8m compared to 37.04m iPhones a year ago
- iPad sales also set a record at 22.9m sold, compared to 15.43m last year
- Apple sold 75m iOS devices last quarter.
- Mac sales during the holiday quarter were down to 4.1m from 5.2m last year
- iPod sales came in at 12.7m from 15.4m a year ago.
- Over half a billion iOS devices have been activated.
- iPhone sales in China have doubled year-over-year.
- Apple’s retail stores are averaging 23,000 visitors per week, a seven percent increase.
- Apple says it has delivered 4 trillion notifications in Notification Center, and it has 200 million Game Center users.
- Apple TV’s sold – over 2 million during the quarter — up almost 60 percent year-over-year.
The results narrowly beat the consensus Wall Street projections, which had Apple posting a $12.8b profit on $54.8b in revenue. Apple also beat its own estimates, which were $11b in profits on $52b in revenue.
Since Apple stock lives in a weird bizarro zone, the news was greeted with passivity by the markets and the stock was down yesterday.
Go figure.
Apple investors are a little bewildering. But, I think the reason may be that all the profits Apple make stay in its coffers and investors see no advantage to it. Investors know this so they are then only able to look at the short term future of stock price and how the company does itself is completely disconnected beyond using as a thermometer of how stocks will do. What does this really mean? It means that a good percentage of investors believe the stock value is inherently too high. Any possible sign that the price may drop is a sign for them to get the best out , which in turn causes high volitility. If Apple wants to keep the cost up, they will have to do one of two things, either a stock buy back or give out dividends to investors.